


Take Me To The Bridge

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Case Fic, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Mabinogion, Possession, Post-Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 04:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4291458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s supposed to be a routine hunt. A few farm animals mutilated a few towns over. It sounds like the work of some two-bit demon—just another day at the office for two experienced hunters and an angel.</p>
<p>But this case is closer to home than it seems. Before long, Dean is in the clutches of a dangerous spirit, and Sam and Cas must try to end an ancient family feud before the whole town—and Dean—gets caught in the crossfire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 [SPN & J2 Big Bang](http://spn_j2_bigbang.livejournal.com). Thanks so much to [amberdreams](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com) and [caranfindel](http://caranfindel.livejournal.com) for all their beta help, and to [little_jade](http://little_jade.livejournal.com) for being super-talented and a delight to work with. <3 The art masterpost can be found [here](http://jadedworks.livejournal.com/4079.html) \-- please go and shower her with praise!
> 
> This story was finished before the later part of S10 aired, so it takes place in what is now a slightly AU future. Dean no longer has the Mark of Cain, but the Darkness isn’t a thing, and Cas regained his ability to fly when he got his grace back.

_ _

 

_So long trapped in this place. So long in the dark._

_When I was a child, my sister and I would ride in the mountains. We traveled for hours, sometimes days at a time. Our names opened doors, meant that we never wanted for a hot meal or a place to sleep. In the furthest corners of the kingdom, we were assured of a welcome. Nothing tied us down. The whole of the Island of the Mighty was our home._

_I’d never felt so free before. Nor have I since._

_The scrubby grass on the high ground; the yellow of the gorse and the purple of the heather; the white scuts of rabbits bobbing as they ran from the sound of hooves. Birds of prey wheeling overhead, their high, sharp calls so far above us that it felt like hearing voices from the otherworld._

_The green shadows down in the valleys. The canopy of leaves above us dappled the floor with sunlight and sheltered us from rain. We could sit there for hours, until the creatures of the forest floor lost their nervousness and came to eat from our hands. They didn’t fear me then._

_They loved my sister best, of course. Everybody did. She was dearer to me even than my twin; knew me in a way he never could. The deer would eat from her hand. The red squirrels climbed onto her shoulders, and the sparrows sang to her. And the ravens, drifting in her wake like shades. Always the ravens._

_Once we pushed through a narrow gap in the bushes and into the larder of a grey shrike. It was winter, a little after the turning of the year. A clear day with wisps of white cloud frozen against the pale sky. It took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing. The miniature corpse of a fieldmouse, skewered on a thorn. A robin, its red breast a startling spot of colour in the dead undergrowth. A small, leathery thing that I had to squint at before I realized it was a frog, dried out in the wintry air._

_Other children might have screamed. Run away. My sister and I gazed in awe. We stood there for a long moment, our breath misting the air. By unspoken agreement, we backed away without a word, leaving the little mausoleum undisturbed. We rode on._

_I was seventeen on the morning I rose early to meet her and found the stables deserted. Her white mare stood in her stall, regarding me with dark, placid eyes. Perhaps she had gone walking? I found her nowhere in the castle grounds._

_I sought her indoors, then. Finally, I found her in counsel with our eldest brother. Brân would be king some day, and he started early, always thinking he knew what was best for us. My sister’s eyes brightened at my knock on the door, but he quelled her with a word and dismissed me with another. I slunk away, and did not ride that day._

_That was the beginning of the end. Our travels grew less frequent as our lives wore on, as duty called._

_My twin was good at everything. His lessons, the affairs of the court. People, more than anything. His smile could forge treaties and mend blood feuds. The faces of the girls shone when he walked by. His wit, quick but never cruel, made the young men laugh and vie for his friendship. That was the one thing I could never match him in. I had a talent, it seemed, for saying the wrong thing. The only smiles directed at me were dutiful ones, belied by their wearers’ eyes. When I tried to make conversation, quarrels inevitably followed._

_In time, I learned to revel in it. I baited our other brothers, sowed discord wherever I found the chance. The world gave me no love, and I would give it misery in return._

_My sister was the only one who understood. She was beautiful, wiser than her years—and as kind as one who understood the workings of the world could be. No wonder everybody loved her. But she never turned from me. She insisted that I had good in me. That all of us did, alongside the bad. She insisted that she could see it._

_They took my sister from me. Brân, and duty, and all the rest. They married her to the king of another island. A man who didn’t know her, who would never understand her. By the time I heard of it, the deal was done, my sister whisked away across the sea. Who could blame me for my anger?_

_Foolish question. They all blamed me. My twin counseled peace and acceptance. Said we should extend the hand of friendship to those who wronged us. Pathetic._

_My older brothers had arranged the match. Stood by and smilingly tore us apart. They would not listen._

_So I burned it all down. The peace they had brokered. By then, I knew well how wars start, and I used the knowledge. I used my sword to give injury and my tongue to give insult, and I burned it down._

_Even my sister turned from me in the end._

_I never turned from her. When the foreign king blamed her for the conflict and she called for our help, I went with the rest of the company. Perhaps I thought that if she saw me ready to fight on her side, she would see that she belonged with us. With me. Perhaps, even then, I thought she would come back._

_I hadn’t reckoned with the child. I knew, the moment I saw him in her arms. The softness of her face when she looked at him—no matter that he was the son of that Irish dog who’d plotted all our deaths. She would never be mine again. Not truly._

_What I did then—_

_I acted out of rage. Out of sorrow. They were my native elements, after all. It was too terrible a thing to be undone. Its price could only be paid with my life, and so I gave it._

_Death, though. Death is a mercy. My death would have been a kind of redemption. Perhaps the world could not allow that._

_I found the gate to the Otherworld closed. Was it the stain of sin on my spirit that kept me out?_

_Whatever the reason, I was exiled. I wandered the earth alone while my brothers and my sister lived and died, passing on one by one to the world beyond this one. I had sacrificed myself in search of redemption, and redemption failed me. It left me alone and rootless, married only to my rage._

_I watched aeons pass. The Christian God rose in the west, and the gods and heroes of my blood faded from memory. We became a story, locked away in obscure corners of dusty libraries._

_I left my mark—_ our _mark—on the earth in the only way I knew how. In blood. I started wars; spilled oceans of it. When sailors crossed the sea to the west and invaded the land they found there, I went with them. A new continent on which to wreak havoc. The frontiers were violent places. I spent decades there._

_That was before the man from the old country came. He knew the old tongue, and he used its words to bind my spirit here, in this mutilated little wooden thing._

_A wanderer no more. A prisoner, now._

_Now, I wait._

_Now, I hear voices._

_Footsteps._

_The lid above my prison is lifted, and I see_ light _for the first time in centuries. Artificial light; but light nonetheless._

_Careful hands lift my prison from its box, and I feel like a flower turning its face to the sun. A figure looms over me, frowning curiously. A young man still, but one with the weariness of long years at war behind his eyes. He brushes hair out of his face and studies my prison intently._

_A noise somewhere behind him._

_The young man starts. My prison falls from his hand, clatters onto the hard floor._

_Breaks._

_It’s enough._

_I hear voices arguing—somewhere above me, and then somewhere below me._

_“Dude,” the first voice says. I think it belongs to the serious-faced young man. “You scared the crap out of me.”_

_“Hey, man, I’m sorry, okay? I was just looking for that spellbook.”_

_“Spellbook?”_

_“Yeah. You know. The one with the engravings?” The other speaker smirks and waggles his eyebrows. He wears his humor like armor. “I wanna see Cas’s face.”_

_“You know you’re gross, right?”_

_“Yup.” The second voice sounds unfazed. “Hey, what’s that thing?”_

_“The thing you just made me break, you mean?”_

_The second speaker stoops and picks up my prison. From the outside, it is such a small thing. A simple wooden figurine; not even a very good likeness of a horse. He examines the misshapen face, the missing ears. The stumps worn smooth by years. “Looks like it was broken already. We’ll sweat it if something evil happens. C’mon, you’ve been down here for hours. Beer o’clock.”_

_I don’t listen to the rest of it._

_I spiral away on the air, unseen and unheard._

_I am free. For the first time in centuries, I am free. And I will be alone no longer._

_Now, I call my brothers and my sister. Now, I call them back to me. Now, I call in blood._


	2. Chapter 1

“Check it out.” Dean opens the door to the storeroom with his foot, laptop in hand. Sam doesn’t move from where he’s sitting on the floor, but his shoulders stiffen.

“Dude, give me a minute,” he says, not turning to look at Dean, and sets some dusty artefact back on its shelf with exaggerated care. “Some of this stuff is fragile. Remember?”

It’s a skill, being able to bitchface with the back of his head. Or maybe it’s just that Dean’s had many, many years of experience when it comes to being disapproved at. He nudges Sam’s ass with his boot.

“C’mon.” Dean keeps his voice light. “Don’t tell me you ain’t bored yet. You’ve been sorting through this crap since lunchtime.”

Sam finally turns his head, so Dean gets the full effect of his eyeroll. “Yeah, well, this would be a whole lot quicker if I had some help,” he says, but he gets to his feet. He brushes the dust from his hands on the legs of his jeans and leans in to look at the screen.

Dean shrugs. “Hey, it was you who decided doing an inventory of all the crap the Men of Letters left hanging around sounded like a good time. Me, I’m gonna trust the one they did before Abaddon offed them. We’re better off leaving this crap alone, you ask me. Any more storybook witches in bottles down here, I don’t wanna know.”

“Yeah, well. For a guy who isn’t doing any of the work, you’re still one for one on the breaking stuff.”

“You dropped it!”

“You snuck up on—wait.” Sam breaks off, squinting at the laptop screen. “Livestock mutilations? You thinking demons?”

Dean shrugs. “Could be. I mean, Crowley’s gone quiet, and that’s never a good sign. Could be he’s up to something, got the minions out doing his dirty work.”

“Yeah.” A little crease appears between Sam’s eyebrows as he scrolls down the webpage. “We haven’t heard from him since—”

He goes quiet, but Dean hears what he isn’t saying, loud and clear. 

_Since you tried to kill him, and me and Cas would’ve been next on your list if we hadn’t found that spell. Since Cain’s prophecy nearly came true._

Nobody died, in the end. Only Crowley got hurt, and not bad enough to keep him from calling Dean a dozen incomprehensible things that might’ve been British for ‘asshole’ before he zapped back to Hell. Sam and Cas both got away with cuts and bruises. The spell worked, and now there’s no Mark on Dean’s arm, just a patch of silvery scar tissue that aches when it’s cold. No harm, no foul. 

Only now, maybe Crowley’s out for revenge—because of Dean, and the thought leaves a bad taste in Dean’s mouth that he can’t get rid of. He tries not to examine the feeling too closely. Crowley’s a demon; always was.

It’s just that he was getting a little more human for a while back there. If Dean set him straight on the path to Douchebag City—well, that’s just one more in the very long line of black marks against Dean’s name, isn’t it?

Dean clears his throat; forces a smile. “Hey,” he says. “We’ve been promising to kill him for years. He’d be offended if we didn’t try once in a while, right?”

He tries not to see the pained quirk of Sam’s mouth, the shadow that crosses his eyes. Sam doesn’t reply right away, keeps his eyes on the laptop screen, and for a moment Dean thinks he’s actually gonna be allowed to ignore the elephant in the room. 

But when Sam finally looks up, he’s frowning. “You sure you’re up for this?” he asks.

Dean scowls. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Sam’s been pushing the whole ‘taking a break’ thing again since Dean lost the Mark. Why he’s still so hung up on the idea now that Dean’s actually gotten rid of the thing that made him a ticking time-bomb out in the field, Dean couldn’t say. 

Well, maybe he could, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna be the one to bring it up. He doesn’t need Sam looking at him like he isn’t sure whether he expects Dean to break or to bite his head off, tiptoeing around the fact that killing’s a part of their job description like Dean’s just gotten his 30-day sobriety chip and one wrong word might trigger a relapse. 

Sam watches his face for a minute, then sighs and says, “Never mind.”

“It ain’t far,” Dean presses. “We head out now, we’ll be there before midnight.”

“What about Cas?”

Cas has spent the last couple weeks with them at the bunker, allegedly trying to figure out what his mission is now he’s stuck down here, but mostly watching Dean with a cautious intensity that makes him want to crawl out of his skin.

Dean gets it. He does. Cas is trying to trust him. Sam, too. Dean knows how it is, always being on the lookout, always measuring how much of the guy standing in front of you is the guy you know. He knows how tired it makes you. Doesn’t mean he’s comfortable being on the receiving end.

He shrugs. “He can come with. They don’t look like letting him back upstairs anytime soon—he could probably use a day out, and we could use an extra pair of hands.” 

And if it means Dean has both not-dead members of his family right where he can see them—yeah, he isn’t gonna complain about that.

“One little demon, Sammy,” he wheedles. “Nothing the three of us can’t handle. Hell, maybe this time around we’ll even manage to save the poor sonofabitch it’s possessing.”

He can’t place the expression that passes over Sam’s face, but Sam stares at the screen for a moment longer, then says, “Fine. Gimme a half an hour to get cleared up here. I’ll meet you in the car.”

 

\----

 

Sam still doesn’t look happy when they knock on the door of the ranch-house whose owner woke up to a nasty surprise. When Dean reaches for the knocker, he opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then stops.

Dean lets go of the door-knocker and turns back to face him. “What?” he says, and manages not to roll his eyes.

Sam jerks his head in the direction of the nearest field. A cow raises its head and regards them calmly, chewing on a mouthful of grass. “So, those cattle.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t look very mutilated.”

Dean shrugs. “You read the news report, Sammy. It was weird. Just the horses.” _I’m not lying to you_ , he doesn’t say. _Will you ever believe I’m not lying to you?_

Sam’s still giving him that troubled look, but before Dean can tell him to knock it off, the door of the ranch house swings open and it’s time to turn on the professionalism.

The woman standing in the doorway is a mess, her eyes red-rimmed in her ashen face. Her long black hair is falling out of its braid, and her clothes are rumpled. She looks like somebody who just lost a relative, not a farm animal.

She looks from Dean to Sam, then back again. Blinks. “Can I help you?” She frowns. “Are you the police?”

“Mrs. Sefton? I’m sorry if this is a bad time,” Sam tells her, switching from mistrustful to softly compassionate in the blink of an eye. “We’re with Animal Control. We’d like to ask you a few questions about the incident on Tuesday.”

Mrs. Sefton stares at him for a long moment. “The _incident_ ,” she says, and a tremor runs through her body like she’s suppressing a sob. “Come in.” She straightens and steps back to let them pass.

Some people really are that crazy about their animals. Dean knows that, though he’s never really gotten it. He glances at Sam behind her back, raises an eyebrow, but Sam still has that understanding look on his face.

Dean shoves down the memory of Sam’s Heaven, the way he’d greeted that dog like a long-lost friend, and elbows Sam in the ribs.

_You’re handling this one_ , he mouths, and then grins when Sam glares at him. 

Normal. It’s almost like they’re back to normal.

 

\----

 

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Sefton says as they sit down. “Most people don’t really get it. The horses are my life.” She pauses, closes her eyes and breathes out shakily. “Were my life. We built this farm up from nothing. It was—” 

She breaks off to compose herself. Sam takes the chair opposite her. “I know this must be difficult,” he says. “Take your time.”

Mrs. Sefton sniffs. “Thank you.”

Dean leaves them to it and risks a glance out the window. He can’t see Cas, but then he could be anywhere around the ranch. Cas has his grace back now. His wings. He can zap around in the blink of an eye like he used to—though his time living in the slow lane seems to have given him some appreciation for the importance of not materializing behind people while they’re taking a piss, which is something Dean’s grateful for.

Cas might never be a hundred percent on the finer points of human interaction, though, which is why he’s outside searching the place while Dean and Sam handle the people and play Let’s Pretend Everything’s Awesome.

There’s no sign of him right now, and if he has found anything, it isn’t urgent enough for him to show up or call, so Dean turns his attention back to Sam and Mrs. Sefton.

“I just don’t understand why Animal Control is here,” she’s saying. “I mean, I didn’t—I didn’t look closely.” She covers her mouth with her hand for a second. “But it looked like a person did this.”

Sam glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye, then turns back to her. “What makes you think that?”

She frowns. “I grew up on a ranch. I know what animal attacks look like. This wasn’t that. There were no teeth marks, but their tails and their ears were missing. And their _eyelids_. I mean, who in the—” She swallows. “That was all.”

Rules out a werewolf, or anything else with claws and canines, and it’s a point in favor of demon activity. Ritualistic, not random. 

“Do you have any idea who would want to do something like this?” asks Sam.

Mrs. Sefton shrugs and slumps forward in her chair. “I have no idea,” she says. “I compete sometimes, but it’s just local events. Nothing serious. I mean, people have rivalries, stupid stuff, but—nothing like this. Nobody I know would do this.”

“You didn’t notice anybody acting strangely in the days before the attack? Out of character behavior?”

She shakes her head.

“Or—anything else odd? Weird smells? Did anybody you know seem to have—problems with their eyes?”

“No.” She rubs her eyes. She’s starting to look at them strangely now. Another minute, she’ll be saying _What’s this all about?_ and asking them to leave. “Nothing like that.”

Sam tilts his head. “But something?”

“It’s—there’s no way it was him. He loved those horses, Amber was like his baby. But—” She stops. Sighs. “Joe Spalls. He works for me, just a couple days a week, helping out with the horses. I assumed he heard about what happened and couldn’t face showing up. It’s already gotten all over town. But he didn’t come to work the last couple days, and he hasn’t gotten in touch. It isn’t like him.”

Sam nods, his expression grave. “Do you have his address?”

 

\----

 

Cas is outside when they leave, leaning against the hood of the Impala. When Dean’s gaze lands on him, he straightens up and fusses with his coat, a sheepish expression on his face.

“What have you got?” Sam asks him, before Dean has time to come up with a suitable threat.

“Nothing.” Cas frowns. “No sulfur. I couldn’t sense any kind of presence. If there was a demon here, it’s gone.”

Dean raises an eyebrow, looks at Sam. “You think Joe Spalls skipped town?”

Sam’s frowning, his eyes distant. 

“Sammy,” Dean says, nudging him with an elbow.

Sam blinks and finally looks at Dean. “Why don’t you and Cas go check it out?” he suggests. “See if he’s home? I’m gonna head back to the motel. Take a look at something.”

“‘Something?’” Dean says. “Care to share with the class.”

“Probably nothing.” Sam sighs. “I just wanna read over the news report again.” He turns to Cas. “Could you—?”

“Of course.” Cas takes his arm, and in the blink of an eye, they’re gone. Another blink and Cas is back, brushing dust off of his sleeves. 

There’s a donkey standing in a field a little way to the side of them. It blinks once, slowly, when Cas reappears, and then bends its head to carry on cropping grass.

Dean sighs and opens the car door. “Looks like you’re riding shotgun.”

It’s weird how Cas has taken to car rides. Even now he’s gotten his wings back, he’ll sit hunched up in the back the Impala for hours rather than just zap and meet Dean and Sam wherever they’re going, and the beige monstrosity he’s been driving around for the past year is still parked up in the bunker’s garage. Dean tried asking him what was up with that once, but all he got in return was a vague dreamy-eyed look and a cryptic comment about _taking the slow path_.

Maybe Cas is just trying to make himself feel better about being kicked out of Heaven. Focus on the good times down here. Which, yeah, not like any of them are spoiled for choice on that score. Car rides with Dean and Sam up front bickering about the music; movie marathons in the bunker; the occasional beer at Donny’s. It’s pretty pathetic when you think about it, so Dean doesn’t think about it much.

Cas seems happy with the whole thing, though—or at least as close to happy as any of them get these days. 

Only not right now, because when Dean starts the engine and turns to check the mirror, he finds Cas looking at him and doing Squinty-Eyes #3 (‘trying to figure out how to start a conversation’).

Dean groans. He’d bet his right nut Sammy and Cas have been talking about him behind his back again. Maybe they’ve taken a vote and concluded that they’d be better off sitting on their asses in the bunker instead of out here doing their damn jobs. Decided that Dean can’t handle it and he needs to be locked down or put out to pasture. Kept out of the fight.

He can’t exactly blame them. The Mark was part of it, and that’s gone—but the rest of it? The things that made it so damn easy to give in? Looking for a fight around every corner because at least he knows how to do that; treating everybody like an enemy, because at least that way you don’t expect them to be on your side? That was all Dean, and it’s all still in there somewhere. It’s maybe even what makes him good at his job, because it sure as hell doesn’t make him good for anything else.

Dean catches himself watching his own eyes in the rear view mirror. Looks away and finds Cas still peering at him.

“Dude,” Dean says. “What?”

Cas just shakes his head. An expression that Dean can’t read flits over his face and then vanishes. “Let’s go,” he says.

Well, amen to that. Dean starts the engine.

 

\----

 

“Joe?” Dean bangs on the door of Spalls’ house. “Joe Spalls? You home?”

There’s no answer.

Fucking A. He already has Sam and Cas giving him wary looks, acting like they’re worried he’s gonna go off, or fall apart, or God-knows-what, now that he’s back out on the job. If one of Crowley’s minions is up to no good topside, then that’s probably on Dean. Is it really too much to ask for them to catch a break?

Well, it’s Dean’s life. Of course it’s too much to fucking ask.

He sighs and pounds on the door again, harder this time.

“There’s somebody in the house,” Cas informs him.

“Huh.” Dean glances up and down the street, and he’s on the verge of getting out the lock pick when he hears footsteps in the hallway.

The door cracks open, just an inch or so. An eye appears in the crack. Dean plasters on a smile. 

“Hello?” says a voice. Middle-aged and female, so it probably doesn’t belong to Joe Spalls. “Who are you? Has something happened to Joe?”

Dean drops the fake smile and pulls out his fake ID. “I don’t know, ma’am. I take it your…son?” he waits for the nod “isn’t home?”

There’s a rattle—Spalls’ mom unfastening the chain—and then the door opens wide enough for Dean to see her face. 

She’s got the familiar hollow-eyed look of the habitual insomniac, her graying hair escaping in tendrils from its messy bun. There’s a coffee stain down the front of her sweater.

“He hasn’t been home since Tuesday,” she says. “It isn’t like him at all. Are you with the police?”

Second time Dean’s heard that today. This case is ticking all the demon possession boxes.

Dean tucks the fake Animal Control ID back in his jacket pocket—thankfully, Mommy Spalls looks too distracted to have noticed it—and nods agreement. “Detective Neil Young,” he says. “And this—” He glances over his shoulder and breaks off, because Cas is gone. “Huh. My partner must’ve had to take a call. Sure he’ll be back with us any minute.” He turns back to Spalls’ mom. “Mind if I come in?”

The hallway smells of leather and something warm and farmyard-y. Pairs of muddy boots sit on an old newspaper beside the door. Spalls’ mom waves Dean on through and says something about coffee. Funny how automatically the hospitality response kicks in, even in people who are worried to distraction, the brain clinging on to normal functioning for dear life.

From the moment he steps inside, though, it’s obvious she isn’t going to be much help. There’s something bloodless and exhaustion-drained about her. She alternates between fussing around in the vicinity of the coffee maker without putting it on and picking up her cellphone and setting it back down again. She hovers, the way people do when they’re too anxious to do nothing but don’t have a clue what they should be doing.

“Have you spoken to Joe since Tuesday?” Dean asks, breaking the awkward silence. “He called? Emailed? Tweeted a photo of his dinner? Anything like that?”

“No. Nothing at all.” Spalls’ mom shakes her head. A puzzled frown appears on her face. “But—I didn’t call the police. Not yet. I guess I was still hoping he’d come home. Does this mean—” She falters. “Have you found something?”

“Actually, ma’am, I’m here about the incident at the Sefton ranch last week. Last Tuesday, actually.”

“You don’t think Joe had something to do with it?”

“We’re just checking out every possibility.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No, he loves those horses. He wouldn’t.” Then her eyes widen, whatever color was left in her face draining away. “You don’t think that whoever did it—that they might have done something to him?”

Damn, but he wishes Sam was here. Dean hates doing the reassuring-worried-relatives part. Sometimes he feels like he spends his whole life saying ‘it’s gonna be okay’ and knowing damn well that it isn’t. The older he gets, the less energy he has for pretending. Sammy’s better at faking hope. Hell, even Cas might be, these days, after his human sabbatical and the years he’s spent on the ground, convinced he can atone for his wrongs if he just tries hard enough.

Dean forces a smile, though even he can feel how convincing it isn’t. “Too early to say,” he says. “We can’t rule anything out right now—but we don’t have any reason to think Joe’s been harmed,” he adds, at the panic-stricken look that crosses her face.

Spalls’ mom relaxes fractionally, but she doesn’t return his smile and she doesn’t say anything else.

Sighing, Dean pulls out a card with his cellphone number and hands it over. “If you hear anything,” he says, “anything at all, call us. We’ll find your son.”

Maybe not alive, maybe not in one piece, but they’ll find him.

Spalls’ mom doesn’t look convinced, but she nods and sees him out. Dean sinks into the driver’s seat of the Impala with a sigh and takes a swig from the cold cup of coffee still sitting on the dashboard. Then he nearly drops it in his lap as Cas materializes in the shotgun seat.

Shit, he is gonna have to get used to that all over again.

He opens his mouth to protest, but shuts it again at the apologetic look Cas shoots him. “I didn’t expect you to be done yet,” Cas says. “The mother—she didn’t know anything?”

“Nah. Just the usual—it wasn’t like him, he’s never done anything like this before. You know how it goes.”

Cas nods, but he’s frowning a little. “I didn’t find anything here, either,” he tells Dean. “No sign of demon activity.”

Dean shrugs. “So maybe the demon made this guy his bitch while he was out of the house and didn’t bother coming home to Mommy. Everything else points to possession. I’d say we still got a case—now we just need to find the artist formerly known as Joe.”

“We should look for abandoned buildings,” says Cas. “Barns, warehouses—anywhere a demon might decide to make its base.”

“I’m with you,” Dean says, and then his stomach growls and reminds him just how long it’s been since breakfast. “But first, I’m gonna look for lunch.”

He half-expects Cas to announce that he’s zapping off to look for demon-haunts—or to just zap, for that matter—but he doesn’t, just settles back in his seat and then gives Dean an expectant look when he doesn’t start the engine.

And when Dean finds a diner a couple blocks from the hotel and they’re settled into a booth with shiny red faux-leather seats, Cas squints at the menu and orders fries and some syrupy abomination masquerading as coffee.

Dean raises an eyebrow, and Cas hunches forward defensively and says, “I enjoyed food. When I was human.”

He doesn’t elaborate further, and when lunch arrives, he drinks the coffee but sits staring at his fries while Dean shoves mouthfuls of cheeseburger into his face. By the time Dean’s done eating, Cas still hasn’t touched his own food. 

Dean makes a face and asks “You gonna eat those?” instead of asking Cas what’s eating him. He has a feeling he already knows.

Cas shrugs and pushes the basket of fries across the tabletop.

“Why’d you even order them if you weren’t gonna eat them?” Dean asks.

Cas is quiet for a moment. Then he sighs and looks down at his hands. “I miss it,” he admits. 

Dean pauses with a fry halfway to his mouth. “Diner food?”

“Being human.” Cas pauses. “Parts of it. It was frequently frustrating.” He adjusts his position on the hard plastic chair. “Uncomfortable. Slow.”

“You got it.”

“But there were other things, too. Small things. They were easy to take pleasure in. To feel.” Cas sighs, and Dean feels an old guilt creeping his way up his throat. “If things had been different—”

Dean puts down the French fry. “If I hadn’t tossed you out the bunker on your ass, you mean.”

Cas fixes him with a look. “That was not your fault.” He looks back down, then. “What I mean is—being human made me appreciate things. I’d never really understood what living was, before. What drove humans to seek experience, to push themselves out of their comfort zones. But when I knew my time was finite…” He trails off.

Dean shoves Cas’s fries away from him, appetite gone. This is about his little confession, back before he lost the Mark. The whole wanting a life thing, which actually made sense back when Dean thought he was gonna die before he ever got a chance at it. 

After he spilled his guts to that priest in Worcester, the whole idea crystallized in his head and he couldn’t shake it. Another day, another lead turned out to be nothing, and he’d been tired and drunk enough to let some of it slip, sitting up in the library with Cas after Sam had started snoring in his chair and finally hauled his ass to bad.

Cas hadn’t been able to help him then; just said, _We’ll fix this_ with renewed determination, and let the rest of it slide.

Now that Dean’s back in the same old life he’s always lived—supernatural nasties around every corner and a new epic shitstorm always brewing on the horizon—having a real life seems about as likely as learning to fly or winning the Lotto. Always was that way, and now Dean’s gotten his perspective back. 

It’s just that Sammy hasn’t caught up yet; and apparently Cas is bringing up the rear along with him.

“Dude,” Dean says. “Don’t. We got no time for this crap.”

Cas looks at him, a little sadly. “Will you keep saying that until you truly do run out of time?” he asks. There’s nothing accusing about it. He just looks tired.

Dean scowls at the table. “I never meant all that crap,” he says, quietly. “I just—I was freaking out, you know. Back—before. Didn’t mean anything.”

Cas doesn’t push him, just keeps that same unblinking look trained on his face.

Dean forges on. “I mean, I thought I was gonna have to kill myself, you know? Or get you to do it for me, whatever. Screwed with my head. My priorities, whatever.” He snorts, grabs his mug of coffee and raises it in a toast. “But hey, I’m back. ‘S all good. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cas says, but he looks dubious about it. 

“So.” Dean sits back in his chair, raises his voice to a normal level to indicate that the subject is closed. “Joe Spalls. What do you think? One of Crowley’s guys? Independent operator? I mean, nobody’s won a million bucks or married Scarlett Johansson around here, so no crossroad deals. So why did whoever we’re dealing with here grab Spalls?”

“Spalls?” A voice says, over his shoulder. “You mean Joe?”

Dean turns to check out the voice’s owner. Mid-twenties, maybe, with wispy red hair and pale blue eyes, cute in a buttoned-up nice-girl kind of a way. She’s frowning.

“You know him?” Dean asks her.

“We were at school together.” Her frown deepens. “He’s nice. Never really _made anything of himself_ —” her voice changes, like she’s imitating someone “—but he’s nice. Lives with his mom. He works up at the Sefton place. Let me ride one of the horses once, even though he isn’t supposed to.” She smiles faintly. “I think he was glad to have the company.”

“Let me guess,” says Dean. “Doesn’t have a whole lot of friends?”

The redhead shrugs. “It isn’t his fault,” she says. “He’s a good guy, just—quiet. I think the horses are his best friends, really.” She catches herself. “Were his best friends, I mean. I heard what happened. Some people are just—” She shakes her head.

“Inhuman?” Dean suggests, and she blinks at him, startled. “Never mind,” he says. “You seen Joe lately?”

She nods. “Last night,” she says. “At Ricky’s bar. He was wasted, just—talking nonsense. I guess he’s real cut up about the horses. Who knows if he’s still gonna have a job, after what happened? I heard Mrs. Sefton say she was thinking about selling the place. She’s real shook up.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Talking nonsense?” he asks. “You remember anything he said?”

“I don’t know. It was weird.” The redhead purses her lips. “He didn’t sound like himself. He was kind of—I wanna say happy, only that makes no sense. More like—manic.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. And he kept talking about his family. Saying he was gonna call all his brothers and sisters. That was the real weird part.” She shakes her head. “Joe’s an only child. His dad ran off when he was a baby, and his mom never remarried. Never even dated anybody else, I don’t think.”

Across the booth, Cas sets down his coffee with an alarmed _clunk_. Dean throws him a quick glance, nods.

“Thanks,” he tells the redhead. “Listen—do me a favor, okay?” He fumbles in his pocket for a card. “You see Joe around again—you call me.” He looks her in the eyes. “Don’t approach him. Just let us know.”

Her eyes widen. “Joe’s harmless,” she insists. “You can’t think he’d hurt anybody?”

Dean offers her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “We just need to be sure,” he says. “Trust me.”

The redhead nods, and backs away from their booth.

“Dean.” Cas is frowning, eyes intent. Well, at least he’s focused on the case now, instead of playing Angelic Dr. Phil. “Spalls talked about his brothers and sisters. This could be a rogue angel. Perhaps Hannah and I missed one.”

“Could be,” Dean says. 

Cas looks troubled. “But the rogues—most of them were in hiding. They didn’t want to be brought back to Heaven. Why this one would be talking about contacting other angels, I don’t know.”

Great. More Heavenly drama spilling downstairs? That’s the last thing they need.

Dean throws a twenty on the table and shrugs on his jacket. “I don’t care what this asshat wants. We’re gonna put a stop to whatever fucked-up shit he’s trying to pull down here.”

Cas hesitates, just for a moment, then nods, his expression going hard.

 

\----

 

“Sammy?” Dean pushes open the door to their motel room, tossing his keys onto the coffee table. “Listen, you can cut out the research. We got some more intel. It’s—”

“Dean.” Sam’s face is pale in the light from his laptop screen. 

Dean blinks at him. “What?”

Sam’s face remains grim. “You want the bad news?” he asks. “Or the really bad news?”

Dean hesitates, wrong-footed by the certainty in Sam’s voice. Then he sighs. “Hey, just lay it all on me, man.”

“It’s not a demon,” Sam tells him. “And it’s not an angel either. I don’t know what it is. But whatever we’re dealing with here—I’m pretty sure _we_ let it out.”


	3. Chapter 2

Dean stares, and Sam heaves a sigh. He isn’t exactly thrilled at this particular turn of events either. He came back to the motel room hoping against hope that he’d be able to rule it out. The mutilated horses; the mutilated horse figurine he dropped back at the bunker. But nope: here it is. 

Of course their first job back in the field wasn’t going to be something straightforward. That would just be too much to ask.

“You sure about this?” Dean asks, after what feels like a lifetime. “Because me and Cas ran into a witness back at the diner. Said she spoke to Spalls last night. He was talking shit about calling his brothers and sisters, only he doesn’t have any. Figured it might be one of Cas’s rogues.” 

Cas stands half a pace behind him, looking befuddled—but, befuddled being Cas’s default state half the time, that doesn’t give Sam much idea what he thinks about the whole situation. He gives a cautious nod when Dean is done talking, but doesn’t offer an opinion. 

“I’m sure,” Sam says, and swivels the laptop around so that Dean can read the screen. “Plenty of monsters have brothers and sisters. I don’t know what this one is yet, but I do know it’s our responsibility.”

It’s a Facebook page. Sam doesn’t recognize the name of the owner, but they’re local. He’d put money on their being a friend of Mrs. Sefton’s.

He lets Dean scroll down the page, and watches his expression freeze as he hits the photographs at the bottom, obviously taken on somebody’s phone. A sunny green field, and two dead horses lying in the ground. Ears and tails hacked off, flies swarming their bloodied eye sockets. There’s a building clearly visible in the background, and it isn’t the Sefton ranch. 

_FIND THE SICK PERSON WHO DID THIS!!_ screams the caption, in angry red caps. Maybe Dean isn’t gonna be joining PETA anytime soon, but he still grimaces as he shoves the laptop back at Sam.

“Okay,” he says, “so we know this happened somewhere else too. Also that it’s gross.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t tell us anything. Could still be a rogue angel gone nuts. Maybe he was possessing some other poor sucker before he grabbed Spalls.” 

“Look at the text,” Sam tells him. “Where the pictures were taken.”

Dean takes the laptop back, peering at the names of the towns. Red Cloud. St Paul. Greeley.

Sam watches the penny drop; watches Dean’s face turn grim. “This leads straight up 281.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Starting from Lebanon.”

“Anything south of us?”

“Nope.” Sam taps the screen with a fingertip. “And look at the date. First one was last Monday.”

Dean looks at him. “We didn’t do anything last Monday. We haven’t done anything for weeks. You’ve been playing librarian in the basement since I got that crap off my arm. Hell, even I haven’t done anything dumber than introducing Cas to Plants Vs. Zombies.”

“And scaring the shit out of me while I was holding a creepy artefact of unknown origin,” Sam reminds him. “A creepy artefact of unknown origin shaped like a mutilated horse.”

Dean looks at the screen again. “Crap.”

“Yeah, that about covers it.” 

“So, you think something got out when you dropped it.” Dean frowns a little. “But it was already broken, right?”

“Maybe not.” Sam sighs again. “It was missing its ears, right? And its tail. I figured that they must have snapped off before the Men of Letters stashed it away, but with what Mrs. Sefton said, and now these photographs—maybe it was _made_ to look like that. Maybe it means something.”

Dean makes a face. “Well, whatever it means, our freak of the week’s been trying for a life-size reproduction.”

“And there’s no way that’s a coincidence.”

“Nope.” Dean sounds tired, and Sam knows he’s feeling it too. The old, too-familiar curl of guilt down in the gut; the reminder that everything they touch turns to shit. Including, apparently, finding themselves in charge of the supernatural motherlode.

The moment Sam figured it out, it felt inevitable. They’ve rarely had time to actually sit back and take stock of everything since those first few weeks in the bunker. The one stretch of downtime they have gotten in the last couple years—after they managed to get Dean undemonized—they spent out on the road, keeping carefully away from familiar places. The wounds were still too raw to be tended at home, the memories echoing down the corridors like ghosts.

Still, Sam’s always thought—maybe sometime. Always _sometime_ ; always in the future; always when whatever clusterfuck they’re dealing with right now is done and dusted. But sometime. He’ll learn everything the Men of Letters knew and use it to really help, figure out something that will actually change the game instead of pinballing helplessly from one disaster to another.

Cataloguing the rest of the stuff in the bunker wasn’t even supposed to be the beginning of that. Just laying the groundwork. Getting things ready, Turns out he didn’t even have to get started to screw it up.

“So,” Dean says, “any leads on what we’re dealing with?” and Sam snaps out of it.

There’s no time for wallowing in guilt. Whatever’s possessing Joe Spalls may be sticking to animal cruelty right now, but there’s no guarantee that it won’t move onto killing people eventually. They need to do damage control.

“Not yet,” Sam tells him. “It would help if I could take another look at the figurine. Maybe figure out what the inscription is.” He looks at Cas. “Any chance you could—?”

“Of course.” Cas takes the proffered door key—the bunker being angel-warded, he can’t just zap straight inside; has to use the front door like everybody else—and vanishes with a flutter of air.

Sam gets to his feet, stretching out the ache in his back and limbs. Dean tugs his tie loose and then steals the single chair. He sits there for a couple seconds, drumming his fingers on the table-top, before he reaches into his inside pocket. He pulls out a hip flask, tips a healthy slug into Sam’s half-drunk coffee, and takes a mouthful.

“Dude,” Sam protests, but it’s half-hearted. He still isn’t far enough from all the fears of the past few months to get genuinely pissed about this stuff. Dean being an ass—a regular, annoying-brother kind of an ass—is still an almost-welcome surprise most of the time.

Dean shrugs and raises the mug in a mock toast. “Guess we should know better’n to take vacations, huh?”

He says it lightly, still smiling, but there’s a tang of bitterness to it. Like maybe he wants to needle at Sam until Sam comes out and actually asks him what the hell happened to _sand between our toes_ , to wanting a life outside of killing monsters. Then they can yell at each other and get separately drunk and never speak of it again.

Sam doesn’t rise to it. “Guess _you_ should know better than to sneak up on people who are actually working,” he shoots back. 

He realizes it was the wrong thing to say when the smirk drops off Dean’s face and he takes a gulp of booze-laced coffee. When he puts the mug back down, his expression is stiff and sad.

Sam’s saved from any more double-edged banter by a disturbance in the air that heralds Cas’s reappearance in the middle of the room, the wooden horse figurine in his hands. He’s peering at the inscription, lips moving as he sounds out the words. They’re all strange, guttural vowel sounds that Sam isn’t a hundred percent sure the human voice is supposed to make.

“You understand it?” he asks. “I couldn’t figure out the language. I mean, the script is Roman, but it isn’t Latin, or—”

“It’s Old Welsh,” Cas tells him, with a frown.

“Huh.” Sam feels a little flame of hope leap up in his chest, and does his best not to let it take hold. Maybe they can figure this out, put a stop to whatever’s going on before anybody gets hurt. But there’s no guarantee. “Can you read it?”

“Yes.” Cas is still frowning. “But the inscription isn’t familiar to me.” He touches a word with the tip of his finger. “This here means _horse_. This means _white raven_. But—this is pagan lore. Nothing biblical. Nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. It’s from a different order of existence to angels or demons.” His shoulders sag. “I’m afraid I’ve never come across it before.”

 

\----

 

The announcement puts Dean in a shitty mood, and soon enough he ditches the ceremony of Irishing his coffee and just ensconces himself on the furthest motel bed with the other laptop, swigging straight from the flask and exuding a toxic miasma of grouchiness. 

Sam gets that they need to stop this thing, he really does—but at the same time, they’ve been in way direr straits than this with way less to go on. Spalls hasn’t even harmed any humans yet, and that’s a big tick in the plus column compared to most of the jobs they work.

Still, it’s forcing them to sit and think, and that’s one thing Dean seems determined to avoid at all costs.

That’s probably a bad thing. Ninety percent of their existence is bad things. So Sam tries to quiet the part of him that wants to imagine this might, eventually, lead somewhere good. That thinks maybe Dean is so determined to work and drink and not think because if he lets himself, he _will_ remember all the things he said before he got rid of the Mark. The stuff about this not being all he wants out of life. Cas didn’t relay all of that conversation to Sam, but the parts he got were enough to tell him that somewhere in there, Dean wants the same things he does. A life that’s more than an endless stream of crap; a light at the end of the tunnel.

Sam pushes the idea away. Dean’s still sulking, and Sam can tell it isn’t the kind of sulk that eventually works itself up into a revealing angry outburst. It’s the kind of sulk that just sits there festering, turning the room airless, until they find a lead or a body or something to force them into action.

Cas is less grouchy, but no more helpful. After a blink-of-an-eye zap around town that turns up jack on Spalls, he perches at the bottom of the other bed and zones out, the way he does when he’s tuned into angel radio and concentrating hard. 

Sam glances over, just once, out the corner of his eye. Cas blinks out of his trance long enough to shake his head, then spaces out again. 

Suppressing a sigh, Sam turns back to the computer.

He pokes around online, sifting through bits and pieces of lore about horses and birds. He sips vending machine coffee to keep himself going until his shoulders ache from hunching over the laptop screen, Cas has quit angel radio in favor of _Tom and Jerry_ , and Dean has quit his silent sulking in favor of bitching about _Tom and Jerry_. And eventually, Sam lands on a name that pings him as vaguely familiar.

Juliette Birch. Sam frowns to himself, repeating the name inside of his head and trying to figure out whose voice he remembers hearing it in. He can’t seem to get hold of it, and he’s just about ready to dismiss as his mind playing tricks on him when it swims into view in his mind’s eye.

An address book, probably bought sometime in the seventies and well-thumbed since. Chickenscratch handwriting. Bobby’s.

Sam sits up in his chair, stretching out his shoulders with a pop.

Dean looks over at him, eyes widening, suddenly alert: like a terrier scenting a rat. “You got something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sam clicks on the name and Juliette Birch’s profile page blinks up on the screen. 

The website belongs to the history department of some British university. _Professor Juliette Birch joined the department as Reader in Comparative Mythology in 1995_ , it reads. _Her most recent book_ , Shifting Territories: Nation, Space and Boundary in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, _is published by University of Wales Press. She has supervised PhDs on subjects including medieval storytelling practices, translating Welsh history…_

Sam scrolls down past the potted biography, the photograph of a smiling middle-aged woman in a floaty cardigan and an obnoxiously purple necklace sitting in a vaguely institutional-looking office. The bookcases behind her are neat and ordered, and there’s a potted chrysanthemum on the windowsill.

She doesn’t _look_ like someone Bobby would know. But it’s the only lead they have.

Sam glances at the time display in the corner of his laptop screen and does a little quick math. Birch is in the UK, and it’s late evening there, a little after ten. She won’t be answering her office phone. Maybe he’ll strike lucky, and she’ll turn out to be the kind of workaholic who can’t resist checking her email one last time before bed. He clicks _Compose Message._

Dean is still looking at him, expectant. “So?” he says.

“I found a page for one of Bobby’s old contacts,” Sam replies as he types. “Nobody we know, but it sounds like she might actually be able to translate this thing. I’m sending her a message now. That’s the good news.” He presses _Send_.

“And the bad news?”

“She’s on the other side of the pond. No home contact number. We’re just gonna have to wait and hope she picks it up before tomorrow morning.”

Sam turns back to his inbox, just in case a reply has appeared in the couple seconds since he sent the email. Nothing.

Dean scowls. “Well,” he says. “We can sit here on our asses watching reruns and waiting for Professor McGonagall to send you an owl—” Sam raises an eyebrow. “What?”

Sam spreads his hands. “Nothing.”

“Screw you. Anyway, like I said. We can wait around, or we can go find Spalls before whatever’s possessing him hurts anybody.”

“Dean,” Cas puts in. “I already searched. He wasn’t anywhere in town.”

“Yeah, well, a lot can change in a couple hours.” Dean gets to his feet, grabbing the suit jacket he discarded at the foot of his bed sometime mid-sulk. “You guys coming or what?”

“Or what,” Sam says, and stays in his chair. “We should wait until we know what we’re dealing with here.”

“Wait until some poor sonofabitch ends up dead, you mean.” 

Sam looks up from the laptop and finds Dean glaring at him. Sam glares right back.

Dean ignores him, grabs his car keys, and makes for the door.

Sam gets to his feet. “Hey,” he says. “How much did you have to drink?”

Dean scowls. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, no.”

Cas stands up. “I can drive,” he offers, and Dean turns the scowl on him.

“Dude, no way. I’ve seen your car.”

Cas opens his mouth to reply, and Sam groans and snaps the laptop shut. The last thing he needs is a sniping match. “ _I’ll_ drive,” he says, standing up. He meets Dean’s eyes, keeping his expression firm. “C’mon, hand ‘em over.”

He’s expecting to have to argue at least a little, but after a second’s hesitation, Dean shrugs and tosses him the keys.

Sam breathes out. Small victories.

 

\----

 

They start back at the Sefton ranch, because it isn’t like they have a better starting-point. Spalls—or whatever’s wearing him—is probably long gone from the bar he was seen at last night, and if whatever-it-is is laying low, it won’t head back to his mom’s place. Plus, it’s possible the horse mutilations have some ritual significance, even if it isn’t mentioned in any lore book Sam’s read before. If they were part of some plan, then maybe their monster will come back to the scene of the crime.

That’s Sam’s theory, anyway, and he manages to talk Dean around to it after a few minutes’ bickering. Or maybe it’s just that he’s driving, so Dean doesn’t have a choice.

Mrs. Sefton actually has pretty tight security. The yard is lit with bright white spots that switch on when Sam tosses a stick in over the gate, making both him and Dean blink and shield their eyes, and there’s an expensive looking alarm system on the stable block. 

Of course, Spalls probably knew the code, so it didn’t do Mrs. Sefton—or the horses—much good.

It means they can’t just walk in, though. Even Cas zapping inside could make the lights come on again. Instead, they inch around the perimeter fence and find themselves in a grassy field. It’s damp underfoot, a steady, depressing drizzle having started up sometime while they were holed up in the motel, and Cas grumbles under his breath about how he remembers now why flying is so much more convenient, his dress shoes slipping on the wet grass.

The second time it happens, he goes over and lands on his ass with a thump. There’s a snort of laughter, and Sam manfully suppresses a smirk while Dean points and sniggers. Cas scowls up at him and demonstrates a surprisingly improved grasp of the basics of modern American cursing.

“Here,” Sam says, taking pity on Cas and offering a hand to help him up. Cas takes it.

“Thank you, Sam,” he says, once he’s upright, and aims a thunderous look at a still-smirking Dean.

Sam grins. Then something catches his eye and he looks back down at the turf. The spot where Cas slipped. The grass is flattened, and not just by somebody falling on it for a couple seconds. There’s a kind of indent in the ground, like something heavy stood there for at least a couple hours.

Or lay there.

Sam frowns, and lets the beam of his flashlight slide over the patch of grass.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s—definitely a horse-shaped indent. There’s discoloration on the grass that just looks like dark shadows in the weak light of the flashlight, but Sam would put money on it being blood.

The edge of the beam catches something else, a little way off. Sam motions to the others to follow and sets off toward it.

Another patch of grass, same as the first. And another a little way beyond that.

There were three horses. This is definitely where the thing possessing Spalls carried out its sick little ritual.

Or arranged it, anyway. Sam’s pretty sure the horses weren’t just left to lie where they fell down. The shapes make it look like they were all in the same position. Arranged as if they were running, heads stretched out in front of them.

The same posture as the horse figurine from the bunker. And they’re all facing the same way.

Sam glances up, to see if Dean and Cas are getting this. From the intent, serious look on Cas’s face—and the fact that Dean’s quit mocking him about his little tumble—he figures the answer’s yes.

“What do you think?” Sam asks. “Is there some kind of—pagan significance to this? Where does the sun rise around here?” He cranes his neck and glances up at the sky. The constellations might give him a clue if he could only see them, but the cloud cover is thick and dull.

“Could be,” Dean says. “Or it could be directions.”

Cas nods gravely. “The woman at the diner said he talked about calling to his brethren,” he says. “Maybe this is a beacon.”

“Or a map.”

They follow the horses’ heads, which is so ridiculously gangster movie that Sam might laugh about if this was some other hunt. If he had any idea what they’re dealing with here. If he could go more than a couple minutes without thinking about Dean and how determined he seems to be to throw himself back into—well, throwing himself at whatever comes their way like he doesn’t give a crap if he lives or dies. Like everything Sam went through to save him meant nothing.

So when Dean stops short, holding up a hand, in front of the treeline behind the Sefton ranch, Sam almost walks right into the back of him. 

He kills the flashlight and narrows his eyes, following Dean’s gesture and peering into the gloom between the trees.

There’s somebody there.

Sam squints at the figure in the trees. It’s too dark to see much. White guy, average height, wearing heavy-duty boots and work clothes. He looks like somebody who might work on a ranch. It has to be Spalls.

There’s a faint, silvery light playing around him, so weak that it takes Sam a moment to register it. It looks like it’s coming from Spalls’ eyes. 

He glances in Dean’s direction. Nods, and then they’re moving toward the guy—keeping low, fanning out to surround him as best they can with only three men. The ground under the trees is soft and mossy. Sam flinches when a twig cracks under his boot and Spalls’ head shoots up—but he doesn’t seem to see them, because after a couple seconds he goes back to gazing off into the distance.

The first sign that something’s wrong is a thud to Sam’s left.

He turns at the sound, sees Cas on the ground at the foot of an old, thick-trunked tree.

Sam glances to the other side, sees Dean looking wide-eyed in the same direction. He shakes his head at Sam’s questioning look: he didn’t see what knocked Cas out, either. Sam narrows his eyes, peers into the dark between the trees.

And then the clearing is full of people.

Or—not people. Figures. They shine the same unearthly silver as the light in Spalls’ eyes, and they surround him, almost like they’re keeping him shielded. Cas blinks his eyes open and gets to his feet, angel blade slipping into his hand, murder in his eyes—but the figure nearest him just turns her back and faces Spalls.

There are three of them. A woman in a long dress like something out of Charlie’s Moondor game, and two guys with serious beards. There’s a bird sitting on the woman’s shoulder. Something like a crow, only white. They stand in a circle around Spalls, looking in at him.

One of the guys steps forward, holding out a hand. His expression is soft. He says something Sam doesn’t understand. Then it’s like a switch flips and he’s hearing the guy’s voice inside his head, a lilting unfamiliar accent saying, _Come with us. Come home._

Spalls glowers. “Where is he?” he demands. His voice is harsh and rusty. “Where is Brân?”

The other guy doesn’t reply, just raises his eyes to the trees.

There’s a rushing in the air. A feeling like something huge coming from all directions at once. Sam whirls on the spot, not sure where to look.

Dean’s doing the same thing, turning and turning, wild-eyed. Cas looks up, white-knuckling his angel blade.

But nothing comes. Just that heavy feeling in the air, like inevitability.

Dean shakes himself, then scowls and moves forward. Sam shakes his head, mouths, _No, what are you doing?_ but Dean ignores him. He steps into the ring of glowing figures. 

“Listen, pal,” he says to Spalls. “I don’t know what’s going on here, or what you think you’re looking for. But that poor bastard you’re riding shotgun with? You’re gonna let him go.”

There’s a moment of absolute silence.

Then Spalls and the three figures turn to look at him in perfect sync, without a sound. 

Spalls cocks his head. It’s a not-quite-human gesture, a little like Cas when he was newer to the world, only this isn’t just curiosity. It’s sharp. A bird of prey lighting on something small and scuttling.

_These are not the affairs of mortals. Or of angels._

Spalls’ lips are moving, but the voice is inhuman. It resonates like it’s coming from somewhere huge and full of echoes.

_You will learn what happens when you do not leave us be._

That, Sam’s pretty sure, should be their cue to split. But Dean just stands there, looking back at Spalls. Not glaring anymore. His eyes are wide, and it’s like he’s frozen in place.

Sam starts forward. He sees Cas have the same thought at the same moment. There’s a flutter of wings, and Cas vanishes and then reappears behind Spalls.

He’s too late. 

Spalls’ body collapses to the ground as a rush of silver tears itself out of him, hangs in the air for a moment, and then reassembles itself into the figure of a man. 

It makes straight for Dean.

“No!” Sam yells. His voice falls flat in the wooded enclosure.

The silvery figure closes the short distance between himself and Dean. Dean doesn’t move. The figure reaches out to him. Steps _into_ him. 

Pale light shines from Dean’s eyes.

“No,” Sam says again. His voice comes out as a whisper. 

There’s a sound like galloping hooves, and he and Cas are alone among the trees.


	4. Chapter 3

“What just happened?”

Sam’s voice comes out hoarse. He feels half-deaf, like in the aftermath of an explosion. Cas stands over Spalls’ unconscious body, looking down at it like he expects it to sit up and offer him an explanation.

After a moment, Cas looks up, and his expression hardens, eyes turning dark and determined.

Sam gets it. This was already personal, but now it’s a different kind of personal.

He fumbles for his cellphone, brings up Dean’s number, and presses _Call_. There isn’t much chance he’ll pick up, but it’s worth a try. Maybe he’ll hear the ringtone: if Dean is still anywhere nearby, it might give them a clue.

It doesn’t. Dean’s voicemail message kicks in just in time for him to look over and see Cas frowning, stooping to pick something off of Spalls’ chest.

A white feather. It phosphoresces faintly in the darkness. Silver. He holds it out to Sam.

Sam heads over there. He takes it, holds it up to inspect—then hears a groan somewhere near his feet.

He crouches and presses two fingers to the pulse point on Spalls’ neck. It takes him a couple seconds, but he finds it. Faint and sluggish, but there. Spalls’ breathing is shallow. No visible injuries, but he looks like he needs a doctor, stat.

“Okay,” Sam says. “I’m gonna have to get this guy to a hospital.”

Cas nods. “I’ll search the area.”

“Meet me back at the motel. Half an hour.” Sam ducks under Spalls’ arm and straightens up, just about managing to get the guy upright. He’s all dead weight. Moving unconscious people is a way bigger pain in the ass when there’s only one of you. “Actually,” he begins, “do you think you could—”

Cas is already gone. Sam sighs and heaves Spalls toward the car.

 

 

\----

 

He drops Spalls outside of the E.R. Honestly, Sam feels bad for the guy. He’s probably just lost his job, at least one of his friends now thinks he’s crazy, and he might well have a police record in his near future. And then there’s the horses. Sam had Bones for long enough to know that animals can feel as much like family as anybody else.

Easiest kind to have, sometimes. They don’t judge your life choices, don’t snipe about you not caring as much as they do, don’t toss you out on your ass because you don’t want to be their Mini-Me. They recognize that you both speak different languages and don’t try to fight about it anyway.

Sam pulls away from the kerb as soon as he hears a shout from the direction of the hospital, and puts his foot down.

Civilian casualty dealt with. Now he’s got more important things to worry about.

Back at the motel room, he curses under his breath as he waits for his laptop to boot up, or for Cas to show up with any news. Everything feels so _slow_.

It’s always this way when Dean’s in trouble. It’s like some part of Sam’s brain knows that he isn’t up to the job; that he isn’t really a protector; that someplace deep down, he’s still the boy who turns everything he touches to ash. That’s been true more than once. He’s tried drowning the knowledge under revenge, tried running away from it, and none of it worked. It always comes back to this feeling, like those nightmares where he knows something terrible is about to happen and he has to stop it, but his limbs are weighted down with lead and moving is like swimming through molasses so he can’t even scream or thrash about in panic.

This is real, and so Sam swallows down his dread. Tells himself this will be one of the times when he _is_ up to the job. He’s only just gotten used to Dean not being in danger. No way is he losing his brother again.

He reaches into his pocket while he waits, and pulls out the white feather Cas found in the clearing.

Under the motel room lights, it doesn’t glow anymore. There’s still something unearthly about it, though. The way colors seem to shift within it. The way it holds the light.

Sam runs a finger along the edge of the feather. Cautiously, like some part of his brain expects it to be sharp. It’s soft, though, like it’s been plucked from the wing of some giant bird.

These creatures aren’t angels. So what does it mean?

He runs over the scene in the woods again. The woman. She had a bird sitting on her shoulder.

Sam tries to piece it together in his mind, running through his mental inventory for stories that fit. Egyptian, maybe? They’ve run into pissed-off old gods before now. But Sam didn’t recognize the woman, or either of her brothers, from any pantheon he knows about. Odin’s sometimes depicted with ravens, but Sam’s pretty sure he’d know if they were tangling with him again.

Then there’s the whole thing where birds act as guides to the land of the dead. Shows up in all kinds of mythology.

Sam pushes that one aside, not ready to think about it just yet. Spalls was still alive when whatever was possessing him checked out. That means that, wherever Dean is, he’s alive, too. He has to be.

“Sam.”

Sam blinks and turns around in his chair. It’s Cas, standing in the middle of the motel room, a defeated hunch to his shoulders.

“So,” Sam says. “Nothing, huh?”

“Nothing.” Cas sighs and sinks down onto the edge of the nearest bed, looking at his hands. For all that he’s mojo-ed up again, it’s a human gesture. A weary one. He sits there for a moment, brow creased in thought, before looking up and meeting Sam’s eyes. “I’m worried about him,” he confesses, then.

Sam manages a short, mirthless laugh. “Well, yeah. I’d say that’s reasonable.”

Cas gives an impatient little headshake. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” He pauses. “Though the current situation is… concerning. I meant—more generally.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs and scrubs a hand across his eyes. “Yeah, I know. It’s like—I don’t know, man. Like the whole thing with the Mark and the being-a-demon and then the actually deciding he wanted to live—it’s like none of that happened.”

Cas looks at him gravely. “Do you think he’d be this hard on himself if it hadn’t?”

He’s right, of course. Dean’s whole self-loathing I’m-good-for-nothing-but-killing-monsters schtick was bound to kick back in as soon as he had a moment to think without imminent death or imminent demonhood hanging over his head. It figures that he’d weigh up all the crap he did as a demon, all the crap that happened under the influence of the Mark, and decide that it outweighs all the good he’s ever done. That he doesn’t deserve a life after all.

Not even the shitty one they already have, if his determination to run half-cocked after Spalls was anything to go by.

“I don’t know, man.” Sam puts his head in his hands. “I thought he’d finally started to figure it out, you know? That if we do this, maybe we should do it because we want to. Not because it’s what our dad taught us and we don’t know how to do anything else anymore.”

“And you, Sam?” He lifts his head and finds Cas looking at him with earnest curiosity, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “What do you want?”

Sam’s saved from having to answer by a _ding_ from his laptop. He pulls it toward him, feeling his stomach flip when he sees the name on the screen.

“It’s from the professor,” he explains, in reply to Cas’s questioning look. “Maybe she’s found something.”

 

 

\----

 

_From: BirchJ2@swansea.ac.uk  
To: sw7152839@gmail.com_

_Dear Sam,_

_Just received your email. Since you’re a friend of Bobby Singer’s, I assume we’re on the same page (also, it’s 1:30 in the morning over here), so I’ll get down to business._

_I haven’t *seen* anything like the artefact you photographed before, but I have heard of it. I’ll get to that later; what’s more important is the text on the figurine. You’re right in thinking it’s Old Welsh; here’s my best attempt at a translation. I’m afraid some of the text is too scuffed to read._

_Here bound;_  
_The monster, the hero_  
_Whose sister broke her heart from sorrow_  
_Whose brother is buried at London_  
_Who saved our [illegible] from Matholwch_  
_Who died in repentance_  
_Who returned to wreak havoc_  
_Who cannot die again_  
_Here bound from the light and from the world_  
_From the songs of birds and the running of the horses_  
_From the love of [illegible]_  
_From staining the good earth with blood_

_It scans rather better in the original, as I’m sure you can imagine. Anyway, the figurine and the inscription make it fairly clear what we’re dealing with here. I’ll forgive you for not being familiar with the lore—honestly, I don’t get many calls about it—but it’s the story of Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, from the Mabinogion. Here’s an online translation: http://www.mabinogi.net/branwen.htm (‘Bendigeidfran’, just so you know, translates as ‘Brân the blessed’. He’s sometimes just called ‘Brân’ in other sources.)_

 

_ _

 

Sam clicks through before reading the rest of the email.

 _Bendigeidfran, son of Llyr_ , the story begins, _was the crowned King of this Island, and exalted with the crown of London. One afternoon he was at Harlech in Ardudwy, a court of his. Seated on the rock of Harlech above the ocean were Bendigeidfran with his brother Manawydan son of Llyr; his two half brothers from his mother's side (Nisien and Efnisien); and such noblemen about them as was befitting around a king. His two maternal half-brothers were the sons of Euroswydd by his mother Penarddun daughter of Beli son of Mynogan. One of these young men was a good young man: he would make peace between two hosts, even when they were at their most incensed - that was Nisien. The other one would provoke conflict between two brothers, even while they were at their most amicable._

Well, that’s a whole lot of brothers. Sam skims a little. The King of Ireland comes to court to say hello, asks for the hand of their sister Branwen in marriage. They get hitched—no mention of the two half-brothers being invited to the wedding. It’s the next part that makes Sam sit up in his chair.

Efnisien, the brother who likes to start fights, finds out that his sister has been married off without anybody telling him.

 _Then one day_ , the story goes on, _there was Efnisien - that quarrelsome man we spoke of above, coming across the billets of the horses of Matholwch. He asked to whom the horses belonged._  
_'These are the horses of Matholwch king of Ireland' they said._  
_'What are they doing here?' he demanded._  
_'The king of Ireland is here, and he has slept with your sister Branwen. These are his horses.'_  
_'So this is what they have done with a girl as good as her, my own sister - giving her away without my consent! They could not have insulted me more!'  
_ _With that he started striking up at the horses. He sliced their ears back to their heads, and their tails to their backs - and wherever he could get a grip on their eyelids, he would cut these back to the bone. And the horses were mutilated thus, to the extent that no further use could be got from the horses._

The grotesque horse figurine sits on the desk, turned a sickly bluish color in the light from the screen. Sam picks it up, holding it gingerly between his fingers. There’s a crack through the script near the end of the binding spell. That must be from when he dropped it.

Its ears and tail are missing, too. He’d assumed they’d gotten snapped off—a long time ago, probably, for the stumps to have worn so smooth—but now he sees that they were never there. Its eyes and mouth are stained with faded red.

Doesn’t leave much question who the binding spell is talking about.

Sam reads over the rest of the story. Branwen has a son with her new husband—but the King, offended by Efnisien’s stunt, turns on her. He starts treating Branwen like a scullery maid, not a queen. Then worse: he locks her away and has her beaten.

She’s resourceful, though. She tames a bird, luring it to her window with crumbs from the kitchen and a lot of patience, and trains it to talk. When she’s certain it knows what to say, she sends it over the sea to her brothers.

They get the message, and the whole family sails for Ireland with an army. There’s a whole lot of subterfuge and politics, and then Efnisien does something way more stomach-churning than animal cruelty: he throws his infant nephew into the fire.

After that, everything erupts into battle. It only ends when Efnisien sacrifices himself, putting an end to the war that he started.

There’s no mention of where he’s buried, of what happened to his bones.

But he’s here right now. Not in Ireland. If this is Efnisien’s angry spirit they’re dealing with, then he isn’t tied to a gravesite.

“What do you have?” Cas is squinting at the back of the laptop like he might be able to x-ray vision his way through it.

“Here.” Sam hands it over. “Looks like the Professor found our guy. Sounds like a real piece of work. I’m just not sure what his tether is.”

He picks up the horse figurine for another look while Cas reads. A little gingerly, like touching it might burn his fingertips or set off some chain reaction. It’s smooth to the touch, room temperature. The inscription is scored into the wood, the grooves worn smooth under his hands. It actually feels lighter than it looks–like it’s hollow, almost. Whatever power there was in this thing, it’s long gone.

Anyway, this can’t be the object Efnisien is tied to. He was bound to it, which means he was already running around doing his blood-soaked thing when whoever did the binding managed to catch him. He got away from the bunker without any problems, as far as Sam can tell, and he’s been on the run ever since. Plus, his brothers and sister showed up when he called them. There weren’t any magical objects involved. It’s like they can all move freely.

Which means Option Number One for getting rid of an angry spirit is off the table. They’ve got nothing to burn.

Sam sighs and sets down the figurine. It looks back at him out of angry, scarlet-rimmed eyes.

He frowns at it. Sounds out the words of the inscription, though they don’t make any sense to him. If there were some way they could recreate the spell…

“Sam,” Cas says. “Who’s John Evans?”

Sam blinks back at him. “Who?”

“The postscript. Here.” Cas hands back the laptop, and Sam remembers he didn’t read the whole of the professor’s email. He scrolls down to the bottom.

 _PS. There’s one other thing that struck me about the inscription on your statuette. I’m no graphologist, but the handwriting looks very familiar. Of course, the dialect on the figurine is much older, but it seems similar to that of an eighteenth-century manuscript I’ve been working on; the journal of a Welshman called John Evans who travelled to the New World and went to work for the Spanish. There’s a short passage from 1793 where he talks about encountering a ‘spirit.’ Of course, in those days, use of the phrase was a bit woollier: ‘spirit’ could mean anything from an angel to one of the_ Tylwyth Teg _. Still, it’s an interesting coincidence…_

Sam grabs his phone. “What time is it in the UK right now?”

Cas blinks at him. “How does that answer my question?”

“Never mind.” There’s a contact number in the email signature—different than the one on the website. Could be the professor’s home number. Sam punches it in and hits Call.

There’s a couple seconds silence, and then the phone rings. And rings.

_We’re not available now. Please leave a message after the tone._

Sam sighs, hangs up, and calls again.

Ring. Ring.

“Hello?”

He has to hold back a laugh of relief. “Hello,” he says, once he’s sure he can trust his voice to work. “Is that, uh, Professor Birch?”

“Yes.” The voice still sounds half-asleep, but not exactly surprised. “Is this—Mr Winchester?”

“Sam. Please.” He hesitates. “Listen, uh, I’m really sorry to wake you at—whatever time in the morning it is with you. But we have a situation over here, and I really think that diary you mentioned might help. Do you have—a scan, or a transcript of it, or anything at all like that?”

“I’ll go one better.” She still sounds tired, but Sam can hear the smile in her voice. “I was working on my translation when I got your email, actually. I’ll send you what I have.”

“Thank you. Really. You don’t know—just, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” says Professor Birch. “And—Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.” Sam isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be an encouragement or a warning.

He thinks of Dean’s face, of eyes lit up with silvery light, and he shivers.

 

 

\----

 

It’s dark, and Dean can’t get out.

He can _almost_ see the world. Almost hear it, almost smell it. The wet earth under the trees; the sickly moon; the cold night air biting through his shirt. He knows all of those things are there, but he’s wrapped in a darkness that clings to his mind like cobwebs and he can’t reach them.

Funny. He’s been demonized, vamped, killed in a dozen new and exciting ways, but he’s never actually gotten possessed before.

It isn’t like he imagined. Chained to a comet, his ass. It’s like being locked away in a crappy little panic room, knowing there are monsters running around inside your home trashing the place, and not being able to get out even though you’re beating your fists bloody on the door. He wants to yell but can’t, struggling against the darkness, trying to reach all those things he can almost see.

Then, worse, even the _almost_ s are gone. It’s just black.

Dean doesn’t know how long it lasts.

He just knows that when he comes back to himself, he isn’t trapped in that dark web anymore. He blinks his eyes to be sure, straining them to figure out where he is. There isn’t much light, but he can make out the wet sheen of the rock wall; a faint suggestion of light far off to his right. It’s cold, and he can hear something dripping.

Is there a cave system around here anywhere? Or maybe he’s in an old sewer tunnel?

He’s lying on his back on the wet floor, so he damn well hopes not.

Dean checks himself out, like you do when you come around from unconsciousness and aren’t sure if you’ve been injured. Wiggles his fingers and toes, moves his limbs gingerly before he curls up into a sitting position.

He’s aching like he just went twelve rounds with Tyson, but nothing’s broken, and his head doesn’t hurt, so probably no concussion. Always a plus.

Dean lets himself breathe out. He knows he doesn’t have time to sit around—he needs to get out of here, get back to Sammy and Cas—but he gives himself a couple seconds to feel the relief. He cracks his knuckles just to know that his body is back under his own command. Watches a drop of moisture run down the tunnel wall, because at least it’s _his_ eyes that are seeing it, no outside interference.

There’s a bigger question, though; one that takes over from relief the second he’s had time to feel it and opens up a pit of worry in his stomach. The thing that took him brought him here for a reason. Said it was gonna kick his ass for interfering in the affairs of—whoever these glowing douchebags are. Now, that sounds like something big is going down.

Big question number two is, where are Glowing Douchebag’s brothers and sister? If one of them can possess people, stands to reason that the others can, too. When Dean got taken, Sam was still there. Cas, too—but he wasn’t quick enough to stop Dean from being grabbed.

The others aren’t here, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in trouble.

Dean gets to his feet. Takes a step toward the light. And then—

Then he can’t.

Dread clutches at his insides as the dark begins to close over his vision again. He tries to wrench himself out of it, but his limbs refuse to obey him. He looks down at his hands and finds them glowing faintly in the dark tunnel, silver light leaking out from under his fingernails.

_Not so fast._

Dean doesn’t hear the voice so much as feel it, a vibration inside his skull.

There was another voice he used to hear like that, not so long ago. One that seemed to come from deep within his self and from somewhere totally alien, both at the same time. There was always this kind of under-layer to it—like there were sounds in there just outside the realm of hearing, on a frequency almost out of range. Sounds that Dean found himself straining to hear, even though he really didn’t want to.

There’s something of that in this voice, too. Dean doesn’t feel it burning in his skull like the voice of the Mark did, but when it stops, he imagines he hears the screams of animals ringing in his ears.

He swallows hard. “What are you?” he grits out. Then feels kind of surprised at the fact his voice works. Though it’s not like there’s anybody to hear him down here, wherever here is.

A moment of silence. No voice inside his head, but the darkness still pulses in his field of vision. The thing isn’t letting him go.

 _A brother_ , the voice says, then. _I am a brother._

“Not what I meant, and you know it.”

 _Oh_. The voice turns sly, knowing. _You want to know why I’m still here. Why I walk the earth when I am so long dead. Why I have not passed on to the realm of_ —Dean doesn’t catch the next word; it isn’t English, he doesn’t think— _with my brothers and sister_.

Still here, long dead, hasn’t ‘passed on’. “You’re a spirit.”

 _That’s what you call us now_. The voice is slow, thoughtful. _We are souls, of a kind. Our mother was human, anyway. But we don’t belong to Heaven, nor Hell, nor wholly to the realm of man. Not to anything from your cosmology. Angels, demons—we’re older than that._

There’s a streak of contempt in the voice, one that sets Dean’s teeth on edge. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I get it. You’re a unique snowflake, just like all your brothers.”

 _And my sister_ , the voice insists, and Dean actually feels something surge through him. Anger; longing; white-hot and quicksilver. Not his own. It’s a little like an amphetamine rush—heady but false, because you know the energy is artificial.

Like the Mark, and not like it, because Dean never could convince himself that none of that was him.

He swallows. “Sure,” he says. He blinks when he realizes he’s holding his hands out. A placating gesture; one he uses when he needs to regroup and he’s playing peacemaker for a few minutes. Maybe Glowing Douchebag—Glowing Prehistoric Ghost Douchebag?—lost control for a second there when he lost his temper. “And your sister. I’m sure she’s awesome.”

 _She was mine_ , the voice says, tight with bitterness, and Dean’s fists clench of their own accord. _She was mine, and she left, and now she’ll never forgive me._

“Okay,” Dean says. He feels a twinge of relief at the suggestion that maybe Glowing Douchebag’s siblings aren’t a part of whatever he’s got going on here. If they aren’t on his side, then maybe they won’t go after Sam and Cas.

Maybe they’ll come after Glowing Douchebag, and if that happens, Dean’s gonna be right in the crossfire, but what the hell. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

“Look,” he tries. “I’m gonna sit back down, okay? Why don’t you, uh, tell me what went down? With your sister, I mean.”

He racks his brain, trying to picture the woman in the group of weird-ass glowy spirits. He didn’t exactly get much time to commit them to memory. She had long hair, and she was wearing some Game of Thrones-style cloak thing. There was a bird perched on her shoulder. Looked like a crow, only it was white as snow.

Dean can’t remember her face, though. He can’t remember her face, and that disturbs him more than it should. Then he figures out that maybe it isn’t _him_ who’s disturbed by it.

 _Branwen_ , the voice in his head says, after a long pause. _It means ‘white raven’, in the old tongue. It suited her. She was so beautiful. So rare._

The note of pride that creeps into the voice is unmistakable. “Let me guess,” Dean says. “She was the baby of the family?”

A laugh echoes inside his skull. _Yes_. For a moment, the voice softens. _We were always together. The others never had time. Branwen was the only person who ever looked happy to see me._

“Sounds like you two had something special.” Dean means for it to be sarcastic, but it comes out more thoughtful than that.

He doesn’t want to get it, but he does. Back when they were kids, before Sam got old enough to start planning for Stanford and normality and getting the hell out of Dodge—well, Dean remembers how that felt.

The teachers at whatever school they were attending that month would take one look at Dean and decide he was trouble. The other kids wouldn’t bother him, because he could throw a punch and talk shit with the best of them, and maybe some of them would even think he was kind of cool—but he never made _friends_. You couldn’t invite _friends_ back to a crappy motel room, offer them boxed mac ‘n’ cheese and marshmallow fluff for dinner, and shrug when they asked where your parents were. So Dean kept his distance, and the other kids did the same.

But at the end of the day, when it was just the two of them? Sam would run to meet him at the school gates, and it felt like coming home, even though they didn’t have one. They were the only people in the school—in the state, hell, in the world—who got it.

 _We did_ , Glowing Douchebag says, breaking in on Dean’s thoughts. _We had a world of our own. We roamed the mountains together. We were free._

 

_ _

 

“Sounds peachy.” Dean pauses. “That’s the thing, though, ain’t it? Even if you managed to talk her into joining up with whatever the hell you’re trying to pull here? This isn’t your world anymore. It’s changed.”

 _It won’t matter_ , Glowing Douchebag insists. _If she is with me, then we will be home._

“C’mon. Everybody knows you can’t go home again.” Dean determinedly doesn’t picture the mess in the bunker, after his last spell of Mark-induced crazy. Doesn’t think about the nights he wakes up smelling kerosene and blood.

 _We are not everybody_ , Glowing Douchebag says. He sounds indignant. That’s a good thing. If he’s arguing with Dean, he isn’t thinking about summoning his siblings again, or swapping out animal cruelty for actual murder, or whatever the hell else he’s got going on here.

So, “Yeah yeah,” Dean says. “You’re real special. That’s why you’re running around slashing the ears off of horses instead of ruling Mordor or wherever the hell you come from.”

There’s a pause.

 _We are the children of gods!_ Glowing Douchebag snaps. But his anger doesn’t hold, the conviction draining out of his tone as he goes on: _The world was ours. But my family rejected me. My brothers only ever spoke to me to scold, to ask why I couldn’t be more like Nisien._

Dean blinks. “Like ninja-who now?”

_Nisien. My twin brother. They used to say he could step onto the field of battle and talk two armies into sitting down and breaking bread. But I never knew how to make peace._

“What, and Mr. Perfect Brother Guy didn’t help you out?”

 _He tried. The gods know he tried. He could never understand. He always looked so… disappointed. Then he stopped trying, just like the rest of them._ Glowing Douchebag’s voice hardens. _By the end, it was only when I brought down chaos on their heads that they ever looked my way. Small wonder that I learned to seek out war._

 

_ _

 

Dean gives an involuntary snort. Yeah, he knows what it’s like to _seek out war_. And he knows what it’s like not to want it, and he knows it doesn’t sound like this. _It isn’t my fault, they never loved me enough_ , cry me a goddamn river.

The Mark might’ve been in the driver’s seat more often than Dean was, by the end, but he never forgot that he asked for the damn thing in the first place. Everything he did was on him, under the influence or not. His choice; his cross to bear.

He’s pretty sure he said that, once.

He scowls. “Yeah, poor you,” he says. “Never heard a murdering asshole try to pull that one before.”

There’s a pause, and when Glowing Douchebag speaks again, there’s something softer about his voice. Regretful, almost.

 _I would stop_ , he says. _If it didn’t mean being without them._

“You’ve been without them for a couple millennia, give or take,” Dean points out. “What the hell difference does it make?”

 _They will have to stop me_ , Glowing Douchebag says. _This time, they will have to stop me. They’ll have to come and face me. She will have to face me._

Well, that sounds way too close to ‘evil masterplan’ for comfort. Fucking A.

“Stop you from doing what?” Dean asks.

Silence. Well, it was worth a shot.

He sighs, and tries another tack. “You ever think that maybe your family are a bunch of dicks?” he asks. “If they wouldn’t help you go straight? Hell, if they wouldn’t even try to forgive you?”

The words ring hollow, even in his own ears. Especially in his own ears.

There’s a reason that when he closes his eyes at night, Sam’s face is the last thing he sees. Not bloodied and dead-eyed, the way it used to be in his nightmares before he lost the Mark—but the way it looked in those last few seconds before the spell took hold. The horror in Sam’s eyes. The way he’d looked at Dean like he wasn’t really Dean anymore. Cas on the floor behind him, sprawled gracelessly where Dean knocked him on his ass, real fear written on his face.

They saw what he really is, and there’s no making that go away. Now, every time Sam broaches the subject of changing things, it feels like he’s taking a step closer to the door.

Same thing when Cas tells them, _It’s quiet out there_ , and Dean can’t help wondering if that means he’s getting ready to haul ass back upstairs and beg the rest of the angels to let him come home. When he sneaks out of the bunker after dark to sit cross-legged in the grass and pray or meditate or commune with the stars or whatever it is he does. Dean can never convince himself Cas will still be around come morning.

What the hell is Dean’s life, without them by his side? Just getting older, drunker and more hopeless until even Crowley stops taking his calls, and a werewolf or a road accident or his own shot-to-hell liver sends him to an early grave.

Keeps him up nights, sometimes. So they saved his ass from the Mark—but what the hell for?

He doesn’t say any of that out loud. After a moment, Glowing Douchebag’s voice sounds again.

 _They’re my family_ , he says. _I’m the only one here who may speak ill of them._

Dean laughs, short and bitter. “Yeah, man,” he says. “Yeah, that’s what I’d say, too.”

 

 

\----

 

Sam looks up from Professor Birch’s notes, eyes hurting from the hours he’s spent staring at the computer screen. He’s gone over the diary entry a dozen times, had Cas take a look, too, but there doesn’t seem to be any way around it. They can’t bind Efnisien without a vessel—as in, a figurine like the creepy mutilated horse thing from the bunker. One that isn’t broken.

He sighs and shoves hair out of his eyes. Reaches for his coffee and finds it stone cold.

Cas looks across at him. “What do you have?”

“Whole lot of nothing.” Sam slumps, lets his head fall into his hands, and finds it too heavy to lift again. “This guy Evans managed to bind Efnisien to this.” He pokes the horse figurine. “But we can’t reuse it now that it’s broken. And there’s no info on how you make a new one.” His shoulders sag. “Never thought I’d say it, but I actually wish Rowena was still taking my calls right now.”

Cas makes a brief moue of disgust. Turns back to the horse figurine, frowning. “I read the story,” he says. “Efnisien redeemed himself, at least at the end.”

“Yeah, and then when the rest of the family didn’t hail him as a hero, he snapped right back into psycho mode.” Sam looks down at his hands. “And anyway—sure, he redeemed himself, but he had to die to get there. We can’t let that happen this time around. Not while he still has Dean.”

Cas gives a grave nod. “We don’t know that he can ‘die’ again anyway. He may not be the kind of angry spirit you’re used to, but he is already dead.”

“And we got nothing to burn.” It sounds hopeless.

After a moment, a thought occurs to Sam.

That case with the college kids, a couple months back, before the shit hit the fan with Dean. The one with Andrew Silver’s ghost riding around on the wi-fi. They didn’t need bones to burn, in the end—just the voice of the one person who could get through to him.

But that just brings up its own set of problems. How do you persuade a guy who’s famous for being able to sow conflict wherever he goes to abandon whatever screwed-up revenge mission he’s on and leave this world behind? What was it the story said about him? _The other one would provoke conflict between two brothers, even while they were at their most amicable._

Huh.

Brothers. _The other one_.

Sam taps on the touchpad of the laptop. The screen blinks back to life, bringing up Professor Birch’s translation. The extract from Evans’ diary.

_Last Wednesday the 23rd January Mr. PARRY and I had the Misfortune of encountering a Spirit, much like the Mountain Ghost describ’d by the Rev. JONES in his Treatise. This Spirit had caused great Mischief in & around BEULAH, & we set out to subdue it using the proper Method as described by Mr. PARRY. Our first attempt proved unsuccessful, & we were forced to retreat, Mr. PARRY sustaining an injury to his Shoulder. _

_We returned Yesterday, with a Summoning & Binding Incantation supplied to me on the Occasion of my Departure by my Friend Mr. MORGANNWG. Our Success in binding the Spirit being assured, Mr. PARRY pass’d on the Object in which it is bound to his Associate, a Member of a Certain Society who has promiss’d to secure the Object. I leave Tomorrow for…_

Sam lets his gaze drift to the bottom of the page, where the professor has added a note. The incantation, translated and written out phonetically in the original words. Looks like she figured it might be useful even before Sam got in touch.

They can’t use it to bind Efnisien again, but according to the diary, the first part of it is for summoning.

Maybe they can use it to get hold of someone who can talk Efnisien round. The other brother—the one who could get two armies to sit down and sing kumbaya.

“Sam?” Cas is looking at him. “Have you found something?”

Sam pictures Dean’s face again, his eyes lit up with unearthly silver.

He looks up and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. We’ve got a plan.”


	5. Chapter 4

“Here.” Cas materializes with a flutter of wings and sets a discolored glass vial on the table. “Water weed from the lakes of Cader Idris. The last ingredient.”

Sam looks up from his notes and takes the vial, holding it up to inspect. There’s a dessicated tangle of green in the bottom, fragile enough it looks like it might dissolve into powder at his touch.

The summoning isn’t much like any spell he’s used before, but with the professor’s translation, he’s ninety percent sure he’s gotten something figured out. The other ten percent is just desperate hope: that the spell will work, and that if he has made any mistakes here, they won’t bite him—or Dean—too hard in the ass. 

Sam takes a breath. “Okay.” 

He sets the notebook in the middle of the table and lights the candles. He doesn’t see Cas move, but the overhead light blinks out. 

Sam tosses the contents of the vial into a bowl and adds the other ingredients. A blackened chunk of bone that gives an incongruous tinkle as he throws it in; a white feather; a drop of dark oil. He runs his knife across his palm, holds his hand above the bowl, and begins to read as his blood drips into it.

The words feel strange in his mouth, guttural and awkward, but he finishes the incantation. 

There’s a long silence, afterward. The candle flames flicker briefly, then go still.

He glances across at Cas, who frowns and shakes his head, the lines in his face etched deeper by the candlelight.

“Awesome.” Sam gives a sigh, and opens his mouth to start reading again. Maybe he’ll be luck second time around.

There’s a gust of wind, the windows rattling in their frames. First one candle, then the other, gutters out, leaving them in darkness.

For a moment, there’s nothing. Even the sounds of cars passing the motel window seem muted and distant. The light of the neon orange sign outside no longer filters in through the blinds. Sam feels like he’s been blindfolded. He blinks hard.

Gradually, he sees the suggestion of a figure to his right. Cas, still standing beside him. The objects on the table come gradually into view, a faint silvery light picking out their edges. 

“Sam,” he hears Cas say, a warning in his voice. Sam turns around.

There he is. One of the spirits from the woodland. A translucent figure with clear, pale eyes and an expression of perfect serenity on his face.

“Nisien,” Sam says.

The figure inclines his head. “You pronounced it correctly.” He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t often hear that, these days.” There’s a lilt to his accent that Sam can’t place, something as gentle as the rocking of waves on a summer day. It breathes warmth through the air, makes him yawn.

That’s enough to put Sam on the alert. He straightens up where he stands and looks hard at Nisien. “Thanks,” he says. “But, uh, we don’t have time for small talk.”

Nisien’s eyes dart around the room. They light briefly on Cas—who doesn’t seem affected by the weird soporific thing—and he raises an eyebrow. “An angel?” he says. “I didn’t realise, earlier.” He frowns in puzzlement. “What could one of you want from one of us?”

“You know what,” Sam says. He says it a little louder than necessary, doing his best to shake the last creeping shreds of sleepiness from his mind. “Your brother took my brother. We need you to help us save him.”

Nisien turns back to him and gives a resigned little smile. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can do,” he says. “You’ve encountered my brother, so you know how determined he can be when he sets his mind to something. And I haven’t been a warrior in a very long time. I never wanted to be one in the first place.”

“Actually,” Sam says, “that’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you.”

Nisien blinks back at him. His smile doesn’t waver. Somehow, that makes Sam feel more out of his depth than if Nisien just told them to go screw themselves. At least he’d know how to start arguing with that.

Sam does his best to ignore the smile. “Your brother’s been dead for thousands of years,” he says. “Which means that he should… move on. Leave this world behind. It’s the only way he’ll ever find peace.”

“Peace.” Nisien says the word slowly, as though it’s an alien concept—which, okay, in connection with his brother, it probably is. 

“It’s what everybody wants in the end, isn’t it?” Sam presses. “Spirits stuck on earth lose their minds. Get caught in this… cycle of revenge. Your brother might have been a fighter when you guys were alive, but don’t you think he might want a chance to be something else after all this time? Don’t you all?”

Nisien doesn’t answer right away. He watches Sam’s face carefully, and after a moment the smile falls from his face; his eyes turn sharp and knowing.

Weird, but Sam finds that more comfortable to look at.

“The rest of us moved on long ago,” Nisien tells him. “The bridge to the Otherworld is open to us, should we need it—but we have our eternity.” He pauses. “But you weren’t really talking about my brother. Were you?”

He’s right. It isn’t fair. Sam hates it, that Dean spent so long fighting the Mark, that he nearly lost himself to it, and that now he’s back he’s being possessed by some bloodthirsty psycho. It makes Sam feel like he’s back at Square One, right where he was after Dean’s body disappeared, when he thought some demon was out there wearing his brother like a prom dress. He can’t keep the desperation of it from coming through in his voice, can’t help but feel the ache of it right in the center of his chest.

He may as well admit it. “So maybe your brother doesn’t want to move on. Maybe he’s too obsessed with whatever he’s trying to do here. That doesn’t mean _my_ brother should have to suffer for it. Dean’s been through enough. Help me get him back.”

“I wish I could.” Nisien smiles again, but this time there’s no serenity in it, just regret. It makes him look more human.

“The lore says you could get men who were at _war_ to sit down and listen to each other,” Sam points out. “You’re saying you can’t even talk your own brother into moving on? You can’t just—tell him you forgive him?”

Nisien drops his gaze. 

“You never did,” Sam realises, his heart sinking. “Did you? Not even you.”

“Should we have to?” Nisien retorts. “I tried. I tried while he was alive—believe me, I did. He refused to listen then. He brought war down upon us. So many of the best men of our island died. An innocent _child_ died. Brân and Branwen—our whole family torn apart.” 

There’s sorrow in his eyes, and Sam thinks back to the story. Nisien disappears from the narrative after the battle. Sam had assumed that was because he’d gotten killed, but maybe not.

Maybe he just lost his faith. Maybe, after everything that happened, he wasn’t the guy who could reconcile two armies anymore.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Sam says. “I didn’t even—”

Nisien shakes his head. Raises his eyes—and there’s something wondering in the way he looks at Sam. “And yet you said ‘forgive him’ as though it was the most natural thing in the world,” he says. “How many wrongs have you had to forgive, Sam?”

Sam meets his eyes. Forces himself to hold their gaze. “About as many as I’ve done myself,” he says. “Look, I’m not saying we’re perfect at it. Dean’s screwed up. So have I. Some of the things I’ve done—I don’t think I have any right to judge anybody else. So neither of us is exactly a saint. But when we’re together, neither of us is exactly the devil, either. That makes it worth it. Forgiving things. Even when they’re hard to get past.”

He can hear an echo in his own voice. It isn’t so long ago that Dean gave him the same spiel—after that amazingly disgusting case at the health spa—and he was the one who walked away from it. It’s strange to find himself saying it, even stranger to find himself believing it.

Though if he’s honest, Sam knows there’s more to it. Being together, that’s one thing. If they could agree to take a step away from the dark together—well, that really would be worth it.

“The love of brothers,” Nisien says, slowly. “That was the heart of all I was, once. How long it has been since I truly felt it. Since I truly felt anything.” The look in his eyes grows distant. “All is peaceful, in the other world. All is calm. It’s always calling to me. Calling me home, lulling me back to sleep…” He trails off.

“You’re a coward.” 

Sam starts and turns around. He’d almost forgotten Cas was standing behind him. 

Cas’s voice is a low growl, thunder written across his face. “It’s true that you don’t belong on this earth anymore. Your otherworld—that’s your home. But you were a warrior, once. You protected people.”

Nisien nods, a faint, puzzled crease between his eyebrows.

“You desired peace, but you understood that evil exists in the world. That you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“I did.” Nisien’s voice is faint, uncertain.

“But when it wears your brother’s face, you turn and run from it. You would rather sleep than look at what he has done.” Cas’s scowl deepens, if that’s even possible. “There is _nobody_ in this room who doesn’t know how that feels. Will you be the only one who gives up?”

Maybe it’s just the reflection of Nisien’s silvery glow, but Sam thinks there’s a pricking of white light in his eyes, like he’s ready to go full-on wrath-of-Heaven, ready to smite Nisien’s otherworldly ass. That isn’t something you see much of these days, and Sam takes an involuntary step back. 

Nisien doesn’t seem fazed, though. Maybe he’s immune to angel powers. He just looks thoughtful, stares into space for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”

Sam blinks. “Yes, you’ll help us?”

“Don’t be mistaken. I don’t think this will work.” Nisien takes a step toward him, proffering one translucent, glowing hand. “But I should like to try. To feel something human again, before I go back to sleep.”

Sam hesitates a second, then shakes the outstretched hand. He expects to find himself grasping at air, or something cold and tingly, but instead it’s just a hand, solid and human. He holds onto it for a second, and then it dissolves back into incorporeality.

“So,” he says. “Where do we start?”

Nisien smiles. “Right here.”

 

\----

 

Dean’s in the dark again.

Glowing Douchebag’s been quiet since their little heart-to-heart. He stayed hunkered down in the dank shithole where he woke up—which turned out to be an abandoned tunnel outside of town—for what felt like a couple hours, until the daylight outside began to fade. Then he headed out.

He moved differently from Dean. It felt weird being in the passenger seat, feeling his posture too stiff and his gait a little off, sending an ache up his left side. It took Dean a couple minutes to figure it out. Glowing Douchebag had a limp—not crippling, but definitely noticeable—from some wound Dean had never suffered. Must’ve been an old injury when he died, with the way he automatically favored one leg, even walking around in someone else’s body.

“So,” Dean said, eventually, not really sure that Glowing Douchebag was gonna answer, “what’s the field trip about?”

 _Brân_ , Glowing Douchebag said. Even though it was Dean’s body doing the walking, he sounded breathless, his voice heavy with rage. _I will call Brân._

“Brân as in—wait.” Dean picked through his memory. He’d heard that name in the woods, right before Glowing Douchebag hopped a ride. And Glowing Douchebag had mentioned three brothers, but only two showed up when he called them. “Your other brother. The one who died in the battle.”

 _The King_. The words dripped with disdain. _The one who sent my sister away. He thought that he knew best, that he controlled us. My brothers still love him. My sister too—even after what he did to us—_

“Buddy,” said Dean. “I’m pretty sure you screwed that one up all by yourself.”

Glowing Douchebag ignored him. _I will summon him here_ , he said. _The others will have no choice but to come. And this time, the battle will end only when we are all destroyed._

“Destroyed? As in, dead? Because I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure you’ve all been dead for a couple thousand years. And you can’t kill a ghost, just—send it through the veil.”

 _Perhaps that’s true of your spirits_ , mused Glowing Douchebag. _But my brothers and sister and I—we were never entirely human. Our afterlife is not the same as yours. We have substance, of a kind. Destroy it outside the realm of Annwn, and the death is permanent. My brothers will have to take vessels to fight me. And then—then, they can be destroyed._

Realization dawned, and Dean’s heart sank. “You mean if somebody kills the poor sucker they’re possessing.”

Glowing Douchebag didn’t reply, and that was as much of a ‘yes’ as Dean needed.

If Glowing Douchebag was planning a full-scale battle—well, that could take out half the town. Even if it didn’t go that far, if it was just his brothers and sister, that was four innocent people in danger right off the bat.

Dean let the conversation lapse into silence, and made a mental note of his weapons. Gun tucked in the back of his pants, knife in his boot. If he could just make a grab for one of them next time Glowing Douchebag was distracted, then he could end this. It was simple, really.

He did his best to resist the impulse to reach back and touch the gun, just for reassurance. Didn’t want Glowing Douchebag to get a handle on his plan.

The sound of a voice distracted him.

Dean could tell it didn’t belong to anybody he knew, but he felt the familiarity of it, a tug in his bones.

 _Brother_ , it said. _Brother. Come and talk with me._

Glowing Douchebag straightened up, listening hard to the night air.

 _Brother_ , Dean heard, again.

 _Nisien_. Glowing Douchebag’s voice was a growl inside his head. He set off at a run. Dean felt the lurch of his legs moving without his permission—and then the darkness came down.

He’s trapped in it, now. He can’t speak, can’t move his hands, can’t grab for his gun. He struggles against Glowing Douchebag’s hold on his mind, but it just wraps around him more tightly.

If Glowing Douchebag gets his fight, Dean just hopes Sam and Cas aren’t dumb enough to walk into the middle of it.

Yeah, right. He struggles harder.

 

\----

 

They’re back in the woods, in the clearing where Efnisien and his siblings showed up first time around. Sam’s tense, shotgun at the ready, though he doesn’t even know if rocksalt shells will work against the kind of spirits these guys are. He can’t use it against Efnisien anyway. Not while he has Dean. 

If Efnisien even shows, which he hasn’t yet. Sam couldn’t exactly _hear_ Nisien calling him—some kind of psychic thing, he guesses—but Cas winced like a clap of thunder had just broken right over his head, and Sam felt the hairs prickle on his arms and the back of his neck.

Now, they wait.

He glances at Nisien, who has his serene mask back in place. No way of telling whether he’s actually disappointed or not. “Try again?” Sam suggests.

Nisien shrugs and says nothing. 

That’s when Sam hears it. Footsteps. Solid, human footsteps, coming toward them at a run.

Their owner stumbles to a halt a little way into the clearing. Not close enough for them to make out his face in the dim light but Sam doesn’t need it. 

“Dean!” He’s moving before his brain catches up to his feet, and only Cas’s vise-like grip on his arm keeps him from running over there.

Cas gives a minute shake of his head, warning in his eyes. Sam grits his teeth and nods. 

This isn’t Dean. Or at least, Dean isn’t in the driver’s seat right now.

“Brother. You called.” 

It’s a sneer, spoken in Dean’s voice but with a silky contempt entirely alien to him. Dean’s face twists with hatred, and watching it makes Sam’s insides knot up with dread. Images flash unbidden before his eyes. Dean looking at him like a stranger. Like a target. The smell of blood in the air. The Blade in Dean’s hand. How dark his eyes were.

This isn’t Dean. Sam clenches the fist of his free hand, nails digging into his palms. This isn’t Dean.

It’s still a struggle to hang back as Nisien steps out into the clearing. “I did,” he says, his eyes fixed unswervingly on Efnisien. “And you know why.”

Efnisien moves to join him, raising an eyebrow. There are tiny pinpricks of light in his eyes—in Dean’s eyes—and Sam has to look away for a moment, swallowing hard.

Cas’s grip tightens on his shoulder. “Wait,” he says, quietly. “Let him try.”

“I know why,” Efnisien echoes. “Because you’re afraid of me.”

Nisien cocks his head. “What do we have to fear?” he asks. “You did your worst a long time ago, brother. What you do in this world, you do to mortal men. Not us.”

“And you let me do it. You’ll let me destroy this town, let them all die— _peacemaker_?”

Nisien holds out his hands, palms up. “Why destroy anything here? What purpose could it serve?” His voice is gentle.

“To make you _see_ me. You, and the rest of them. I’ll do it.” Efnisien reaches into his—Dean’s—jacket pocket, and pulls out a paper bag. 

The inhuman light shines brighter in Dean’s eyes, now. Silver swirls around his face, his hands, washes all the color out of his skin. He sinks into the uncanny valley, right there before Sam’s eyes.

Efnisien tips the contents of the bag onto the floor. Sam squints at them in the growing light. A hunk of bone. Dried-out plant matter. A feather.

It’s a summoning spell, just like the one they used to summon Nisien. 

“He wouldn’t come when I called,” Efnisien shouts. “Brân. He always thought he was better than the rest of us, just because he was the eldest. Well, he knew nothing! He took her from me!” There’s a note of hysteria in his voice. It’s turning hoarse, ragged. It isn’t Dean, Sam knows it isn’t Dean, but it still makes something clench up painfully beneath his ribcage. “And the rest of you went along with it! You always hated me. Now you’ll all have to stand up and fight me.”

“Brother.” Nisien’s voice is soft, resonant with sorrow. It rings through the clearing and makes it feel like it’s full of quiet, cut off from the rest of the world. Efnisien abandons his tirade and goes quiet. “I never hated you. None of us did.” Nisien steps forward, offering a hand. “I don’t think we ever understood you—but if you came with us, stopped all this? We could try. We could all try. Why not give us a chance? Let us give you a chance?”

Efnisien hesitates. Looks at his brother, wild-eyed. Sam sees that expression on Dean’s face, and it’s like having all the breath punched out of him. He can’t help but remember the last time he saw it for real.

In that barn, after the fight with Cain. Sam had been so afraid that Dean was lost the second he stepped inside those doors. That he wouldn’t be himself when he emerged. And he wasn’t. It was just that Sam took too long to see it.

Efnisien hesitates for a second. Then he shakes his—Dean’s—head, and shouts, “No! No, you’ll only leave me again. You all will.” 

He pulls something else out of a pocket, and Sam recognizes the gleam of Dean’s lighter in the silvery light. Efnisien flicks it once, twice. The spark catches, and he tosses it onto the pile of spell ingredients.

He begins to recite something. Measured and hypnotic, the words half-familiar even though they’re in a language Sam doesn’t know, one that sounds heavy and alien coming out of Dean’s mouth. 

Sam recognizes enough to know that it’s a summoning incantation. Almost the same as the one he used earlier, to summon Nisien. 

Who, right now, still stands in front of his brother, one hand held out in that beseeching gesture. He doesn’t move when Efnisien starts to chant. The resignation settles back into the lines of his face, aging him a dozen years in the space of a few words.

Sam turns to Cas. “I think we’re done waiting,” he says.

“Agreed.” A blink of an eye, a disturbance in the air, and then Cas is standing behind Efnisien—behind Dean, with the creepy silver light still glowing in his eyes. Sam darts forward, levelling the shotgun at the space above the fire, where whatever Efnisien just summoned is presumably going to appear.

That’s when he feels it. The same thing they felt last night, when they tracked Spalls here. That sensation in the air. A rushing, a pressure, like something vast bearing down on them…

Nisien cranes his neck to peer through the trees. Efnisien looks up, his rapturous expression even more unsettling on Dean’s face than wild-eyed desperation. Sam knows he should look up, find out what they’re dealing with here, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Dean’s face.

Then there’s somebody standing in front of him.

Sam takes a step back and blinks. 

It isn’t one of the translucent ghostly figures from last night. It’s Mrs. Sefton from the farm. She’s dressed in a bathrobe and pajama pants, fluffy white slippers on her feet, and her eyes glow with ghostly silver.

As Sam stares, the translucent shape of a white bird circles toward her and comes to rest on her shoulder.

Crap. 

He turns on the spot. Sure enough, it isn’t just Branwen who’s shown up with a brand new borrowed body. There’s a guy who Sam vaguely recognizes from the sheriff’s office—their first port of call before the Sefton ranch—with his own set of glowing eyes. Must be the other brother, Manawydan.

And there’s someone else. _Something_ else, Sam thinks at first, because the shadowy presence that looms over them is more mountain than man. The boughs of the trees move as he passes. There’s no way this guy is possessing a living person. He’s translucent, like all the others were first time around, but Sam gets a sense of mass, of solidity, just looking at him.

Brân. The eldest brother; the King.

These aren’t just any spirits. They’re the heroes, the mythological figures—hell, the demi-gods—of their mythology. Maybe literally. Sam’s read theories about how gods diminish with age, as people stop believing in them and eventually even reading their stories. Even the little asswipe fairies that abducted Dean were gods, once.

Sam pushes the rest of that memory away. Even if he had time for it now, there are parts of it—parts of _him_ in it—that he doesn’t like to think about.

So maybe Brân is nobody’s god anymore, but he’s still a colossus to his brothers and sisters. It’s like their ghostly memories are enough to make him more than a man. No wonder he’s the one Efnisien wants to pick a fight with.

If Efnisien were less of a psycho, Sam might even admire his balls. There’s something about the way his eyes light up when they land on Brân that’s painfully Dean-like. Dean years ago, before the grinding relentlessness of the struggle crushed all the joy out of him. The way he used to grin and crack jokes before a fight. The give-‘em-hell attitude before it got turned into a life-is-hell attitude.

The expression on his face is both familiar and so unexpected it’s like something from another life, and it aches.

“Brân.” It doesn’t even sound like Dean anymore. There’s something else that resonates in it, a frequency that Cas cocks his head at but Sam can’t hear.

Cas stands poised just behind Dean, ready to grab him by the shoulders, but he catches Sam’s eye and Sam shakes his head. They’re outnumbered now, and they don’t know what these guys are capable of. For all they know, the others might just decide to take Efnisien down if things go south, and Dean’s still standing in the crossfire with a target on his forehead. They can’t risk it.

_Brother._

Brân’s voice isn’t even a voice at all, really. It’s something Sam feels in his bones, rumbling up from the earth. The kind of voice rocks or trees might speak with. 

_What do you want with me?_

“You know what I want!” 

_We haven’t known you for a long time, brother._

“You know. You still know.” Efnisien spins around and Dean’s eyes light on Branwen, alight with desperation. “ _She_ knows.”

‘She’ stays silent, looking back at him with accusing eyes. 

_You want us to fight you?_ Brân asks. _Why?_

“You hate me so much?” Efnisien spits back, Dean’s face twisting in fury. “Then destroy me!”

Sam takes an involuntary step forward, and he sees Cas do the same. The ghostly siblings don’t even react, apparently too caught up in their own drama to pay attention to what’s going on around them.

 _We never hated you, brother_. There’s sorrow in it. Old, slow sorrow, seeping into Brân’s voice like water filtering through rock. _I forgive you. Come with us._

Brân gestures with one shadowy hand, and Sam’s breath catches in his throat. 

The path into the woods is gone. Where it stood, there’s just blackness—and a bridge, woven out of silvery thread, suspended above the void. It stretches so far into the distance that Sam can’t see the other side. There’s a hum in the air, making the hairs on his arms rise.

 _Let the human go_ , says Brân. _Come with us._

Nisien chimes in. _I forgive you_ , he says. _Come with us._

Manawydan. “So do I. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be this. You never did.”

Efnisien turns to look at one, then the other. There’s confusion cutting through his anger, now. He reaches for the gun tucked into the back of Dean’s waistband, then hesitates, fingers fluttering in the air.

That’s when Branwen steps forward.

They just stare at each other for a moment. It’s uncomfortable watching Efnisien’s expressions cross Dean’s face. The fear there. The hope.

A long moment passes before Branwen speaks. “You killed my son, brother,” she says, her voice in a different register from Mrs. Sefton’s. “There is no forgiving that.” She watches his face as it sinks in. Then she holds out a hand. “But I love you still. Continuing to kill innocents—that would be more unforgiveable still. Come with us.”

She inclines her head toward the bridge, and Dean’s eyes follow her. Her words hang in the air like a promise.

Sam swallows. His throat feels dry, but he screws up his courage and gets out, “You know, you should listen to your sister.”

Abruptly, silently, all five of the ghostly siblings turn to look at him. Their glowing-eyed regard is disconcerting—especially the part of it that’s coming from Dean’s eyes. Sam reminds himself ( _hopes_ ) that Dean is still in there somewhere, and ploughs on.

“I mean, me and my brother? We’ve done some pretty crappy things to each other over the years. We’ve got issues; I’m not saying we don’t. But if I just held onto all of that, forever? I’m pretty sure it would’ve killed me by now.” He takes a deep breath, fixes his eyes on Dean’s face. Tries to will away the ghostly light shining out of them. “It’s never too late to start over. Not if you really want to.”

“He’s right,” Cas chimes in, quietly. “It’s time you rested.”

Sam could swear that he sees Efnisien waver. His eyes dart between their faces—Sam’s and Cas’s, and those of all his siblings. He finds Branwen’s eyes and stares at her for the longest time, his anguish written across Dean’s face.

Then his eyes harden. 

Sam feels dread like a stone in his gut. Cas goes tense, ready to grab him, but before he can do so, Efnisien makes a gesture over the fire. The flames flare up, bright, actinic white. Efnisien begins to speak. It’s a new incantation, and the words are unfamiliar, but Sam doesn’t need to understand them to know they don’t mean anything good. There’s a charge in the air, prickling down the back of his neck.

Efnisien makes another gesture. His voice rises in pitch.

And then he falters.

His expression turns bewildered, his mouth moving around words that make no sound. Then his face changes. The silver light in Dean’s eyes dims.

And oh, shit, Sam knows _that_ expression. It’s Dean, and Dean alone. It’s Dean about to do something really stupid.

It happens so fast Sam only has time to make an aborted step forward, his mouth open around Dean’s name. He doesn’t even hear himself say it. There’s something in Dean’s free hand: something bright and metallic.

Dean gives a full-body shudder, like he’s fighting with himself. He goes stiff, and for a moment, Sam’s terrified that Efnisien is back in control. 

Then Dean wrenches his arm free and buries the knife in his gut.

 

\----

 

There are faces looming over Dean. They’re kinda fuzzy, but he knows who they are. He isn’t that far gone. Yet.

Ghostly voices wash over him. _Efnisien_ , they say—because apparently that’s Glowing Douchebag’s name. Dean still thinks Glowing Douchebag suits him better. _Brother._

He reaches up and tries to shove them away, but he’s weak, and he ends up just flapping his hands ineffectually. He doesn’t want them. He wants _his_ family. 

The spirits are looking at him, but it isn’t really him they’re looking at. _Brother_ , they say, and Dean tries to tell them to get fucked, he isn’t theirs, but the words won’t come out right and they just ignore him anyway.

 _Brother_ , they say again. _Come with us_. Then a few words spoken in a language Dean doesn’t understand. It’s the big guy’s voice, Brân, and it must be some kind of a spell, because Dean feels something. An uncoupling. That dark web breaks up and drifts away, stops trying to wrap itself around his mind.

When Glowing Douchebag checks out, it’s the opposite of a weight off of his shoulders. Whatever’s been keeping him conscious lifts out of him, and he can’t move his limbs and he’s pierced through with cold. It’s deep in his guts. He looks down and there’s a dark stain on the front of his shirt.

Oh, yeah. He stabbed himself. That’s gonna hurt.

The faces turn away from him. _Yes_ , they say. Their voices fade, echoing like he’s hearing them across a vast distance. _Yes, come with us._

And then they’re there. Sammy. Cas. Dean’s own family, kneeling beside him, their faces shadowed with concern.

“Dean!” Sam’s voice is too loud. It hurts his head. “Jesus, Dean, what were you thinking?”

“Hey,” he tries to say, “it worked, didn’t it?” but it doesn’t really come out, the syllables slurring into one another.

“Don’t talk,” Sam says, hand on his shoulder. Solid. Present. 

Then Cas touches two fingers to his forehead, and everything goes mercifully black.

 

\----

 

He lurches awake once on the drive back to the motel, sliding across the backseat because Sam doesn’t know how to take a corner. 

Shadows crawl at the edges of his vision. When he blinks, he sees the negative image of that bridge stretching across the void, hears echoing voices. _Come with us. Come with us. Come._

He rubs at his eyes and tries to sit up. Cas’s hand lands on his shoulder, not letting him. “Hold still,” he says. “I’ve healed the stab wound, but you’ll be weak for a little while. Rest.”

“’M not weak,” Dean protests, and shoves ineffectually at Cas’s arm. It doesn’t move, and the darkness crawls back up to meet him.

_Come with us. Come with us._

Their faces keep floating over him. Glowing Douchebag’s brothers and sister, their voices joining together like a lullaby. Even Branwen, who flat-out said that the crap he’d pulled was unforgivable. The bird on her shoulder watches with flat, unwavering eyes, but she says, _Come with us._

Dean doesn’t get it. Glowing Douchebag didn’t deserve any of that. They should’ve let Dean bleed out and left Glowing Douchebag to die along with him. But they won’t leave him alone. Their concerned faces, their soft, encouraging voices. He tries to cover his eyes with his hands, but he can’t shut them out.

Next time he wakes up, it’s Sam’s face hovering over him.

He squints and sits up on the motel bed. “Dude,” he grumbles. “Get outta my face, that’s creepy.”

Sam grins. “So you’re feeling better.”

“Fuckin’ A.” He takes a look around the room. “Where’s Cas?”

“Back in the woods. He’s gonna hang around there for a while, make sure that bridge closed up after they took Efnisien back to Annwn.”

Dean frowns. “Where?” He pauses. “Wait, never mind, I don’t care. We got any beers?”

“I’ll take a look.” 

Sam turns away to root through their stuff, and somehow it’s easier to ask the back of his head, “Why’d you think they did it?”

“Did what?”

“You know.” Dean shifts on the bed, but he can’t get comfy. “Took him back, after all the crap he’d done. I mean, he offed his sister’s kid. You don’t earn forgiveness for things like that.”

For a moment, the line of Sam’s shoulder’s stiffens. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know, man,” he says. “I mean, they weren’t even completely human, I don’t think. Maybe their brains don’t work like ours. But if I had to guess? Maybe he wasn’t always that way. Maybe they knew there was good in him, once, and they chose to believe there could be again.”

“Yeah.” Dean frowns. “Or maybe they just felt guilty.”

“Could be.” There’s a clink of bottles, and Sam turns around, beers in hand. “Or, I dunno, maybe they wanted to prove him wrong. I mean, he screwed up big time. I’m not saying he didn’t.” He twists the cap off one bottle, then the other, and passes one of them to Dean. “But did that mean he was doomed to just go around doing evil for the rest of his life? That he didn’t have a choice? _I_ wouldn’t wanna believe that.”

Sam lapses into silence. Dean turns his head and finds that Sam isn’t looking at him, his eyes fixed on some point on the opposite wall.

“Yeah, well,” Dean says. “Who the fuck knows? Just as long as they don’t take any family vacations back here anytime soon.”

That gets a faint smile from Sam. He turns back, leans over to clink his beer bottle against Dean’s. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll drink to that.”

Dean settles back against the headboard. He’s only halfway down his beer when he finds his eyes closing again.

This time, at least, his dreams are empty.


	6. Epilogue

It’s early. Sam should be sleeping, but he woke in the small hours from one of his many recurring dreams in which something other than Dean taunts him from behind his brother’s face, and he didn’t exactly feel like closing his eyes again.

So he’s back in the bowels of the bunker, looking through the last of the stuff the Men of Letters left behind. According to Dean, it’s ‘the saddest hobby in the entire world, I mean seriously, dude, take up building model planes or something’—and okay, Sam wouldn’t want it as a full-time job—but it helps. When the inside of his head is the kind of a mess he can only shut the doors on and hope for the best, this is something he can put in order.

This time, though, Sam’s extra careful to keep an ear out for footsteps in the corridor. Being startled into breaking anymore ancient-asshole-spirit-containing objects isn’t on his to-do list.

Which is why he recognises the footsteps as Cas’s before he even steps into the room. Sam sets down the file he’s been reading on some ancient Icelandic rune-stones it’s apparently very important he not touch (lucky he found it before he opened the box). He smiles up at Cas.

“I’d say ‘couldn’t sleep?’” he says, “but…”

Cas gives him a faint smile. He stands in the doorway for a moment, considering, then folds himself up to sit cross-legged on the floor opposite Sam. It’s kind of weird, seeing him this way—trenchcoat-less and barefoot, dressed in a pair of ratty old sweatpants and a faded gray tee that Sam is ninety percent sure he borrowed from Dean without asking. It’s Cas’s concession to slobbing-out-at-home-wear, which kind of makes it feel like he’s finally gotten around to accepting the bunker as home. That’s good, Sam thinks.

He’s pretty sure Dean thinks so, too, though getting anything much out of Dean at the moment is blood from a stone, so he’s given up trying.

“I’d like to stay here,” Cas says. “If you’re amenable.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. Abrupt, but that’s Cas. “You already talked to Dean about it?”

Cas frowns a little. “I don’t know if that would be a good idea.”

Sam gets it; he does. Dean might cling on to his family as fiercely as a mama bear, but try to actually _tell_ him that you’re there for him, and he’ll run a mile. You can’t say Cas hasn’t learned anything about humans in his time down here. 

Though it might be that he’s just learned about Winchesters, and that probably isn’t a good thing. 

Sam forces the idea away and smiles back. “Sure,” he says. “As long as you want. Hey, we can always use you around.”

“Yes.” Cas chews his lip, then says, “But if you couldn’t?”

Sam frowns, not getting it. “Of course,” he says. “You’re family, man.”

Cas nods, apparently satisfied with that, and it isn’t until he stretches and stands up, putting an end to the conversation, that Sam understands what he maybe meant.

A day when Sam and Dean couldn’t use a little angelic assistance on the side? That would be a day when there’s no battle to be fought. A day when their lives aren’t—this. Or not _just_ this, anyway. 

Sam feels like he should say something, and he opens his mouth to do so when another set of footsteps tramp down the corridor. “No,” he hears, then a pause. “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”

Dean sticks his head around the door, still in his pajamas and the gross dead guy robe he’s apparently never gonna give up, says, “You got it” into his cellphone and hangs up.

He frowns at them. Mostly at Sam. “Donna call you too?” he says. “Or is this just your idea of fun? Wait, don’t tell me. It’s new Nerd-o-Yoga: sit like Buddha and inhale nutritious dust at the same time.”

“You’re hilarious,” Sam tells him, then frowns. “Wait, Sheriff Donna?”

“Uh huh. Wanted to know if we ever heard of anything like a were _bear_.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Wow.” Then he groans and gets to his feet. “So, we heading out?”

Dean hesitates. Looks at Sam, then at Cas, then back at Sam again, and shoves the cellphone back in his pocket. “Nah,” he says, finally. “Jody’s already on her way up there. They got this.” 

Before Sam can reply, Dean’s turning to leave the room. “C’mon, I need coffee. And breakfast. Pancakes. I don’t care if it’s asshole o’clock in the morning, I’m making pancakes.”

“Dean,” Sam says. “You realize what you just did there?”

Dean scowls back at him. “Shut your face,” he says. “You’re eating pancakes.”

He stomps off down the corridor—well, as much as it’s possible to stomp in slippers, anyway—and Cas trails after him.

Sam hangs back, setting the box of rune-stones back carefully on the shelf. Up ahead, Dean and Cas are arguing about blueberry vs. banana. Sam waits and listens to them a moment longer. Then he follows, and allows himself to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much if you've read this far!
> 
> I've played a bit fast and loose with the mythology here, though I don't think I've taken any more liberties than the show generally does. 
> 
> John Evans (AKA Ieuan ab Ifan, AKA Don Juan Evans, AKA Jean Evans) was a real person, and is the subject of Gruff Rhys's excellent biography, [American Interior](http://american-interior.com/).


End file.
